Organic chemistry

Polymer and Wood Chemistry

Improved understanding of synthetic organic chemistry will provide a stable base for the tailoring of new monomers, which are industrially useful as such, or which can be copolymerized to give very high value speciality polymers. These polymers can in turn be of high industrial value. The development and use of new materials, such as smart polymers, is of particular interest in this research.

There are three main projects:

- new polyesters

- polymer bound reagents and new polymer supports and

- new sizing agents, all of which deal with various synthetic aspects of preparation and the use of new, very high value monomers.

The fact that fully aromatic polyesters are not compatible with cheap aliphatic polymers "poly-olefins", such as polyethylene, is the main obstacle preventing the industrial use of high-cost main chain liquid crystalline polyesters. One of the future applications of such blends is in the production of ultra thin TV screens. The direction of the efforts in the laboratory of polymer chemistry is towards new comonomers which can be used as internal compatibilizers to improve the adhesion of an immiscible polyblend. In another polyester project new, highly hydrolyzable building blocks have been tailored and incorporated into a polyester backbone in order to enhance the hydrolytic bio-degradation of the target polyester. Such polyesters can be used to encapsulate drugs which are released through a controlled decomposition of the polymer.

Polymer supported reagents and catalysts are one of the most promising areas of future development, partly because environmentally harmful effluents, such as CrVI, are avoided and partly because high cost chemicals can be circulated. Currently, we have two projects in the area of polymer bound reagents / catalysts. The preparation of enantiomerically pure main chain metal coordinators that can be used as polymeric metal chelators in metal catalyzed reactions, such as asymmetric hydrogenations, is of vital importance. Another polymer bound reagents project deals with the synthesis and use of oxidatively stable polymer supports in high temperature oxydations.

Finally, in the field of new paper chemicals research is focused on the synthesis and use of tall oil and extractives based on neutral sizing agents that compete with the most efficient commercial sizing agents, like alkyl ketene dimer (AKD) and alkyl succinic anhydride (ASA).

Viimeksi päivitetty: 04.09.2007