Superporous hydrogels (SPHs), based on poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) (PHEMA), were prepared by adding minute amounts of an ioncomplexable hydrophilic acrylic acid. PHEMA SPHs are generally strong, but their swelling is minimal. To improve the swelling, different poly(HEMA-coacrylic acid) hydrogels were polymerized and crosslinked, then physically treated with divalent calcium and trivalent ...

Submicrometer patterns of adjacent, well-ordered and disordered domains were obtained using optical lithography by area-selective, photoinduced disordering transitions within block copolymer composite films. Enantiopure tartaric acid was blended with poly(ethylene oxide-block-tert-butyl acrylate), PEO-b-PtBA, copolymers to yield well-ordered films. In the presence of triphenylsulfonium triflate...

*Correspondence: Hatsuo Ishida, Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA e-mail: [email protected] High-performance thermosets via amide–imide functional benzoxazine resins as precursors have been synthesized.The structures of synthesized monomers have been confirmed by 1H NMR and Fourier transform infrared. Among these two benz...

Ferulic acid (FA), a bio-based resource found in fruits and vegetables, was coupled with a hydroxyl-amino acid to generate a new class of monomers to afford poly(carbonate-amide)s with potential to degrade into natural products. l-Serine was first selected as the hydroxyl-amino partner for FA, from which the activated p-nitrophenyl carbonate monomer was synthesized. Unfortunately, polymerizatio...

Despite being a simple dehydration reaction, the industrially relevant conversion of lactic acid to acrylic acid is particularly challenging. For the first time, the catalytic cracking of lactide and poly(lactic acid) to acrylic acid under mild conditions is reported with up to 58 % yield. This transformation is catalyzed by strong acids in the presence of bromide or chloride salts and proceeds...

We develop coarse-grained force fields for poly (vinyl alcohol) and poly (acrylic acid) oligomers. In both cases, one monomer is mapped onto a coarsegrained bead. The new force fields are designed to match structural properties such as radial distribution functions of various kinds derived by atomistic simulations of these polymers. The mapping is therefore constructed in a way to take into acc...