Abstract

The Evolution of Material Function Through Continuous-Flow Chemistry

Edward Franklin, , University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Current high-throughput technology for the synthesis and analysis of synthetic copolymers requires complex and cost-intensive infrastructure and is not amenable to lab-scale discovery efforts. We envision a benchtop instrument that rapidly synthesizes, formulates, and analyzes synthetic copolymers powered by a user-friendly graphical interface. This lecture will detail our current efforts toward understanding the fundamental thermodynamic, kinetic, and fluid transport phenomena that influence copolymer structure and composition during continuous-flow macromolecular synthesis. With these parameters quantitatively defined, our efforts towards the systems engineering of high-throughput copolymer synthetic infrastructure will be described.