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47913-SE
Stimuli Responsive Polymers, at the ACS National Meeting, April 6-10, 2008, New Orleans, LA

Christoph Weder, Case Western Reserve University

The past two decades have seen a surging interest in the exploration and exploitation of stimulus-responsive polymers, i.e. macromolecular materials which, usually reversibly, change at least one of their key properties in response to an external stimulus such as such as a change in temperature, pH, ionic strength, solvent, and irradiation with light or electric fields. The possibility to program them with desired functions clearly distinguishes stimulus-responsive polymers from other advanced materials with ‘traditional’ functional characteristics. Demonstrated or targeted high-level functions such as perception, judgment, movement, and recognition, have triggered the (of course inaccurate but rather descriptive) use of the term ‘intelligent materials’. The combination of fundamental scientific curiosity on the one hand and the broad technological opportunities that promise to impact virtually all areas of life on the other define the increasing interest in these materials.

The goal of this symposium was to bring together established experts, scientists at the beginning of their careers, and students from different disciplines, to share most up-to-date and important research focused on the design, synthesis, processing and application of stimuli-responsive polymers. Six half-day oral sessions with about 50 talks concentrated on (1) Biorelated Materials; (2) Optoelectronic Materials; (3) Actuating and Supra­molecular Materials; (4) Responsive Materials in Solution; (5) Chemoresponsive Polymers; and (6) Mechanoresponsive Materials. The talks were complemented by a poster session in which 30 contributions were presented. The division of the symposium into sessions with pre-defined sub-themes proved to be very fruitful; this mechanism helped to attract specific contributions that matched the topic very well and which featured the latest developments of this emerging field. Invited and contributed oral and poster contributions were balanced to make the symposium a meeting place for emerging young as well as established scientists and to solicit participation from international as well as national speakers.
The symposium was held as part of the 235^th ACS National Spring Meeting in New Orleans and was sponsored by the ACS Division of Polymer Chemistry, Inc. Most of the six oral sessions attracted an audience of between 40 and 80; the seating capacity of the room (ca. 70) assigned to the symposium was often used to its limit. The symposium received also highly visible coverage by leading professional journals. Nature Materials published a multi-page symposium report that summarized the symposium and highlighted several talks. Chemical and Engineering News and the chemistry podcast from Nature focused their coverage related to this symposium onto the work of a research team at Case Western Reserve University on bioinspired chemomechcanical polymers, which was presented at this symposium by Jeffrey Capadona.

The funds awarded from ACS-PRF were used to partially cover travel cost of six speakers from overseas.

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