The National Science Foundation Division of Materials Research awarded a $950,000 Project Grant to the Regents of the University of Minnesota under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) to develop economically viable approaches for recycling the most prevalent commodity plastics. Specifically, the five-year award will fund research to synthesize triblock and multiblock copolymers that can localize at phase-separated domain interfaces when blended plastics are melt mixed,...
This $119,084 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, funded under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CFDA 47.049) program, supports fundamental research by Arizona State University to advance the understanding of interfacial effects on polymer crystallization in multicomponent semicrystalline materials. The research will use a novel fluorescence-based technique with nanoscale resolution to study polymer/polymer and polymer/substrate interfaces and their impact on crystallization behavior....
This $510,000 federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) aims to develop a practical and scalable approach for the universal compatibilization of polymers, facilitating the recycling of mixed plastic waste. The project, led by the University of California, Irvine, will investigate two innovative compatibilization methods based on dynamic covalent chemistry. The first method will introduce dynamic crosslinks...
This $420,000 federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Chemistry, under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049), supports a collaborative research effort between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. The project aims to develop catalytic methods to edit the molecular architectures of various plastics, such as polyesters and polyurethanes, by leveraging stereospectific and...
This $1,800,000 Project Grant awarded by the National Science Foundation Division of Chemistry under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) supports the establishment of the NSF Center for Polymers for a Circular Economy (PCE). The center aims to develop new strategies for synthesizing effective replacement polymers from inexpensive and sustainable feedstocks like carbon dioxide, biomass residues, and food waste oils. Key objectives include designing novel polymers that can...
This $210,335 NSF Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CFDA 47.049) Project Grant award to Drexel University supports the development of a new computational method to accelerate the design of new polymeric materials. The project aims to create a simulation technique that can simultaneously resolve both monomer-level chemistry and mesoscopic length scales within polymeric materials. This has the potential to significantly speed up the development of new polymers for diverse applications like...
This $173,383 federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) supports the development of a new class of degradable, peptide-based plastics with customizable properties. The Research Foundation of the City University of New York (RFCUNY) will lead this 5-year research project to create sequence-specific polymers derived from renewable biobased molecules. The goal is to enable the synthesis of plastic materials with...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $742,587 Project Grant through its Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) to The Trustees of Princeton University's Office of Research and Project Administration Division. The grant supports Princeton's research to develop degradable polymers derived from commodity plastic monomers. Key objectives include investigating the kinetics and mechanisms of cobalt-mediated radical copolymerization of isocyanides and acrylates,...
The National Science Foundation's Division of Chemistry awarded a $600,000 project grant titled "CAS: Computation-Assisted Discovery of Enantioselective Polymerization Catalysts for Degradable Polyesters" under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Federal Grant Program (CFDA 47.049). The grant will support research teams at Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University (Virginia Tech) to develop new chemistry for the synthesis and recycling of stereocomplex poly(lactic) acids...
This federal Project Grant award of $244,960 from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences Program (CFDA 47.049) supports computational research to discover new block polymer materials. The project aims to develop generative AI and machine learning techniques to predict novel self-assembled block polymer structures and identify the corresponding polymer formulations and processing parameters. The goal is to enable the discovery of new multifunctional materials...
This $248,000 federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) supports computational and theoretical research to model crystallization in semicrystalline polymer blends, such as recycled commodity plastics. The research aims to enhance the material properties of recycled plastics by understanding and predicting how different polymers crystallize near phase-separated interfaces in these blends. Key objectives include developing a multi-scale computational framework to model polymer crystallization, elucidating the effects of interfacial compatibilizers on mechanical properties, and creating a numerical simulation algorithm to predict crystalline morphologies in polymer blends. The research team at Dartmouth College will also provide training on computational research skills to high school, community college, and undergraduate students, and develop a mobile app to promote public awareness of polymer recycling and sustainability.