Sequence-Controlled Polymers Synthesis, Self-Assembly and Properties

The present volume of the ACS Symposium series is dedicated to the emerging field of sequence-controlled polymers. The objectives of this new research discipline include the synthesis, characterization, and exploitation of synthetic macromolecules containing ordered sequences of comonomers. This topic has gained significant importance in academic polymer research during the last several years. The community, which was initially composed of a few isolated researchers, has rapidly grown in a dynamic international network. As a consequence, the first international symposium on sequence-controlled polymers was organized at the 246th American Chemical Society national meeting in Indianapolis. All the chapters in this volume are related to the invited oral presentations that were given during the symposium. This selection of papers gives an overview of the field and highlights its interdisciplinary nature.

Indeed, the symposium participants and the authors of this book are not only polymer chemists, but also organic chemists, supramolecular chemists, and physico-chemists. As a matter of fact, the design of tailor-made sequence-controlled polymers is a topic that goes beyond the traditional barriers of synthetic polymer science. Sequence-Controlled Polymers: Synthesis, Self-Assembly, and Properties will be of interest to a broad readership, as it is the first book to explore the important topic of sequence-controlled polymers. Based on its recent academic impact, it is reasonable to expect that this field of research will continue to grow in the next decades.

Jean-François Lutz is a CNRS research director, deputy director of the Institut Charles Sadron in Strasbourg, and head of the Precision Macromolecular Chemistry group. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Montpellier II (France) in 2000 and his habilitation degree from the University of Potsdam (Germany) in 2009. Before joining the CNRS, he was a post-doctoral fellow in the group of Krzysztof Matyjaszewski at Carnegie Mellon University (2001-2003) and afterwards, leader of the research group Nanotechnology for Life Science at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research (2003-2010).

Tara Y. Meyer received her B.A. from Grinnell College in 1991 and her Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1991. Her doctoral thesis, under the supervision of Prof. Louis Messerle, focused on the reactivity of early transition metal acyl complexes. She carried out postdoctoral work at both the University of Iowa (1991-1992) under the supervision of Prof. Richard F. Jordan and the University of California, Berkeley (1992-1994) under the joint supervision of Prof. Robert G. Bergman and Bruce M. Novak. Dr. Meyer joined the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh department of Chemistry in 1994 and is a member of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

Makoto Ouchi is an associate professor at Kyoto University and concurrently a PRESTO researcher with Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). He received his doctoral degree from Kyoto University in 2001 and then joined Toyota Central R&D Labs., Inc. as a researcher before moving to Graduate School of Engineering of Kyoto University as an assistant professor. He received the Young Scientist Prize of the Annual Kobe Polymer Research Symposium (2011) and the Polymer Journal Zeon Award (2012).

Mitsuo Sawamoto (b. 1951, Japan) received his B.S. (1974), M.S. (1976), and Ph.D. degrees (1979) in polymer chemistry from Kyoto University. After post-doctoral research at the University of Akron (1980-81), he joined the Department of Polymer Chemistry, Kyoto University in 1981 and has been a professor of Polymer Chemistry since 1994. He is an executive member of the Science Council of Japan (2005-), a titular member of IUPAC Polymer Division (2008-), the immediate past president of the Society of Polymer Science, Japan (SPSJ) (2008-2010), and one of the editors for the Journal of Polymer Science, Part A, Polymer Chemistry (1995-).