This particular post, or rather, series of posts has been inspired by an article in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/science/09emily.html
It seems that people do not know who leading scientists are. This is a shame since there are great scientist out there, doing work that can have huge implications on daily life. The further implications is the fear that the public has of science. See The Ethical Chemist for further information. I plan to introduce a few interesting chemists so that maybe my loyal readers learn a little about some cool science.
The first scientist I would like to introduce is Marc Hillmyer of the University of Minnesota. http://www.chem.umn.edu/groups/hillmyer/ I was first introduced some of the work by the Hillmyer group at a conference in Australia. I chose to present his work as part of a seminar that was required for my Ph.D. The work that I was most interested in was his work on miktoarm star terpolymers for multicompartment micelles. So what does this mean? The Hillmyer group makes polymers that have three "arms". One arm of the polymer is a water soluble (the term used is "hydrophillic") polymer, like polyethylene glycol. The two remaining arms are both not water soluble (the term used is "hydrophobic"). But what is really interesting is that the two hydrophobic arms also don't mix: one is a hydrocarbon polymer; the other one is a fluorinated hydrocarbon. Think of this like a teflon frying pan and bacon grease. Neither will mix well with water, but the bacon grease (the hydrocarbon polymer) also won't stick to the teflon (the fluorinated polymer). Now these polymers, when added into water will assemble so that the hydrophillic polymers are on the outside, while the hydrophobic polymers are on the inside. Because the two hydrophobic polymers don't mix, they form two different compartments inside. The result are multicompartment micelles. A neat application of multicompartment micelles would be in drug delivery. Two incompatible drugs could be packaged in each of the different compartments and then delivered to the same target. This is just one particular example of a possible application. But my favourite part of this work is the synthesis. I love how this group was able to join all three of these polymers at a single carbon junction. This is not trivial. I found the synthesis very elegant.
Selected Publications by Hillmyer:
Liu, C.; Hillmyer, M. A.; Lodge, T. P. – Evolution of Multicompartment Micelles to Mixed Corona Micelles Using Solvent Mixtures – Langmuir 2008, 24, 12001–12009.
Li, Z.; Hillmyer, M. A.; Lodge, T. P. – Morphologies of Multicompartment Micelles Formed by ABC Miktoarm Star Terpolymers – Langmuir 2006, 22, 9409–9417.
It seems that people do not know who leading scientists are. This is a shame since there are great scientist out there, doing work that can have huge implications on daily life. The further implications is the fear that the public has of science. See The Ethical Chemist for further information. I plan to introduce a few interesting chemists so that maybe my loyal readers learn a little about some cool science.
The first scientist I would like to introduce is Marc Hillmyer of the University of Minnesota. http://www.chem.umn.edu/groups/hillmyer/ I was first introduced some of the work by the Hillmyer group at a conference in Australia. I chose to present his work as part of a seminar that was required for my Ph.D. The work that I was most interested in was his work on miktoarm star terpolymers for multicompartment micelles. So what does this mean? The Hillmyer group makes polymers that have three "arms". One arm of the polymer is a water soluble (the term used is "hydrophillic") polymer, like polyethylene glycol. The two remaining arms are both not water soluble (the term used is "hydrophobic"). But what is really interesting is that the two hydrophobic arms also don't mix: one is a hydrocarbon polymer; the other one is a fluorinated hydrocarbon. Think of this like a teflon frying pan and bacon grease. Neither will mix well with water, but the bacon grease (the hydrocarbon polymer) also won't stick to the teflon (the fluorinated polymer). Now these polymers, when added into water will assemble so that the hydrophillic polymers are on the outside, while the hydrophobic polymers are on the inside. Because the two hydrophobic polymers don't mix, they form two different compartments inside. The result are multicompartment micelles. A neat application of multicompartment micelles would be in drug delivery. Two incompatible drugs could be packaged in each of the different compartments and then delivered to the same target. This is just one particular example of a possible application. But my favourite part of this work is the synthesis. I love how this group was able to join all three of these polymers at a single carbon junction. This is not trivial. I found the synthesis very elegant.
Selected Publications by Hillmyer:
Liu, C.; Hillmyer, M. A.; Lodge, T. P. – Multicompartment Micelles from pH Responsive Miktoarm Star Block Terpolymers – Langmuir 2009, 25, 13718–13725.
I hope that my readers found this interesting. There is lots of interesting science being done out there. This particular post doesn't even cover all the interesting work that is being done in the Hillmyer group.
Awesomesauce! Super interesting stuff! More please :)
ReplyDelete