Helical structures are chiral, which means that if we can synthesize a polymer having a stable one-handed helicity, the polymer is optically active. In 1979, we succeeded in the synthesis of a one-handed helical polymer from an optically inactive achiral monomer, triphenylmethyl methacrylate (TrMA). This is the first example of the asymmetric synthesis of an optically active one-handed helical ...

Lithium ion batteries have shown great potential in applications as power sources for electric vehicles and large-scale energy storage. However, the direct uses of flammable organic liquid electrolyte with commercial separator induce serious safety problems including the risk of fire and explosion. Herein, we report the development of poly(vinylidene difluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene) polymer m...

This paper presents an overview of the synthesis, chemical and electrochemical properties, and polymer electrolyte fuel cell applications of new proton-conducting polymer electrolyte membranes based on hydrocarbon polymers. Due to their chemical stability, high degree of proton conductivity, and remarkable mechanical properties, per ̄uorinated polymer electrolytes such as Na®on, Aciplex, Flemion...

Conducting polymer nanostructures have received increasing attention in both fundamental research and various application fields in recent decades. Compared with bulk conducting polymers, conducting polymer nanostructures are expected to display improved performance in energy storage because of the unique properties arising from their nanoscaled size: high electrical conductivity, large surface...

This talk will cover two classes of electroactive polymers under development recent at Penn State. One is the modified poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) (P(VDF-TrFE)) polymer and the other is the high dielectric constant all-organic composite. Recently, making use of the defect structure modification in P(VDF-TrFE) based polymers, we converted normal ferroelectric P(VDF-TrFE) into rel...

Polymers that are thermally insulating in bulk forms have been found to exhibit higher thermal conductivities when stretched under tension. This enhanced heat transport performance is believed to arise from the orientational alignment of the polymer chains induced by tensile stretching. In this work, a novel high-sensitivity micro-device platform was employed to determine the axial thermal cond...

A novel protein imprinted polymer for selective recognition of lysozyme was obtained. Acryloyl-beta-cyclodextrin, which offered hydrophilic exterior and hydrophobic cavity that were allowed to self-assemble with the template protein through hydrogen interaction and hydrophobic interaction, was synthesized and used as the functional monomer. Polymerization was carried out in the presence of acry...

Recently, cobalt redox electrolyte mediators have emerged as a promising alternative to the commonly used iodide/triiodide redox shuttle in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs). Here, we report the successful use of a new quasi-liquid, polymer-based electrolyte containing the Co(3+)/Co(2+) redox mediator in 3-methoxy propionitrile solvent in order to overcome the limitations of high cell resistanc...

A polymer/PCBM hybrid electron transport layer is reported that enables high-performance perovskite solar cells with a high power conversion efficiency of 16.2% and with negligible hysteresis. Unlike previous approaches of reducing hysteresis by thermal annealing or fullerene passivation, the success of our approach can be mainly attributed to the doping of the PCBM layer using an insulating po...