Krzysztof (Kris) Matyjaszewski of Pittsburgh will be honored April 9 by the world’s largest scientific society for his innovative approach to making finely crafted polymers, compounds such as plastics, high-tech lubricants, even pharmaceuticals. He will receive the 2002 Award in Polymer Chemistry from the American Chemical Society at its national meeting in Orlando, Fla.
The properties that any substance exhibits — whether brittle or soft, its color, at what temperature it melts and so on — are directly related to the arrangement of its atoms, and small differences can translate into dramatically different properties. But making a reaction pot of polymers, with their long chains or loops of chemical building blocks, can be a haphazard exercise.
“What I’m doing is first to understand how some polymerizations work and what is the problem in controlling them,” said Matyjaszewski, a professor of chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University. “Then we can tame their uncontrolled behavior and convert ill-controlled systems to living polymerizations which can yield tailor-made structures.”
Tailor-made structures mean tailor-made properties, such as a plastic that’s more flexible while maintaining its strength.
Matyjaszewski calls his approach “living polymerization,” in which building blocks are added one by one, step by step, rather than from start to finish all at once. After each addition the chain goes to sleep, ready to re-awaken when a new polymer unit is added.
With the precision his invention allows, Matyjaszewski and his team have built polymers in the shapes of stars, combs, rings, dense bushes, even segmented arrangements. “With these kinds of structures you can make all variety of coatings — special adhesives and glues, ingredients for cosmetics and hair treatments,” he said.
His most recent achievements include several techniques to control the highly reactive intermediate forms of polymer units as they assemble into chains. He founded ATRP Consortium which will begin to commercialize one such process later this year.
A native of Poland, Matyjaszewski received his Ph.D. in 1973 from the Polish Academy of Sciences and joined Carnegie Mellon in 1985, serving as head of its chemistry department from 1994 to 1998. He is a member of the ACS polymer division and a fellow of its division of polymeric materials science/engineering.
The ACS Award in Polymer Chemistry is sponsored by ExxonMobil Chemical Co.