Chemical Society Seminar: Jeremy Luterbacher - Build back better: preserving and building on natural structures to make new biobased chemicals and materials
A major focus of green and sustainable chemistry research has been to try to find ways to produce the same chemicals we use today from sustainable sources. Such a challenge usually involves the deconstruction and major modification of biomass’s three constituent polymers: cellulose and hemicellulose, which are both polysaccharides; and lignin, which is a polymer of phenyl propanoid sub-units.
Chemical Society Seminar: David Palmer - Biocatalysis: complex catalyst, simple procedure, surprising outcomes
Biocatalysis has become a valuable addition to synthetic methodology, and have been embraced by the pharmaceutical industry in recent years. Enzymes can provide efficient and stereoselective transformations under mild conditions, although they are not without limitations. Our lab has studied aldolases for many years, but recently has begun exploring their utility in preparative-scale reactions.
Chemical Society Seminar: Antonio Facchetti - Unconventional semiconductors and processes for flexible, stretchable and wearable electronics
In this presentation we report the development of novel materials, as well as thin-film processing and morphology engineering, for flexible and stretchable organic and inorganic electronic devices such as thin film transistors, electrolyte gated transistors and circuits. On material development, we present “soft” small-molecules and polymers by co-polymerizing pi-deconjugated building blocks or properly designed additives.
Chemical Society Seminar: Lingzi Sang - Thioantimonate Electrolytes for All-solid-state Sodium Batteries – the Evolving Structure, Interface, and Electrochemical Performance
All-solid-state sodium batteries use earth-abundant elements, non-volatile and non-flammable electrolytes, and are considered a safe and sustainable choice to satisfy the growing demand for energy storage. Using solid-state electrolytes (SEs) also eliminates the need for packing when fabricating tandem cells, potentially enabling further enhanced energy density.