47447-SE
Polymers and Liquid Crystals, at the ACS National Meeting, August 2007, Boston, MA
“Polymers and Liquid Crystals” POLY Division Symposium
Fall 2007 American Chemical Society National Meeting Boston, MA (Aug. 19–23, 2007)
Program Summary/Final report for PRF Grant #47447-SE
The "Polymers and Liquid Crystals" symposium at the Fall 2007 ACS National Meeting was held as four talk sessions on Aug. 21 and 22, 2007, plus a poster session on the evening of Aug. 21. The participants in this 2-day symposium included invited and contributed 23 speakers (+ 1 cancelled talk) and 13 poster presenters.
The focus of this POLY symposium was to showcase new research and application directions in the area of liquid crystal (LC)-containing and LC-based polymer systems. Such materials are important because LCs provide the ability to readily control order and anisotropy in polymer materials, and thereby amplify or modify specific properties. In addition, LC components offer the ability to control polymer architecture on the nanometer scale to generate organic nanomaterials with enhanced chemical and physical properties. The last major ACS symposia on polymers and LCs were held in Fall 1999 (POLY) and Fall 2003 (PMSE). These prior symposia focused on fundamental understanding of the structure, self-assembly, and polymerization behavior of the main LC polymer systems at that time; and their utility in optical and structural applications, primarily. Since then, a number of significant advances in LC polymer systems have emerged, including new types of materials using new LC phases and polymer architectures; integration of new functional properties into LC polymer materials; and new areas of application, including functional coatings, membranes, catalysts, tissue engineering scaffolds, and micro-actuators. This symposium provided an interdisciplinary forum for the presentation and discussion of new and previously unpublished results on how polymer materials in combination with LCs can produce anisotropic and/or nanostructured polymer materials with new, relevant, and interesting properties.
The "Polymers and Liquid Crystals" symposium was the one of the most popular and well-attended symposia in the POLY Division at this ACS meeting. For each of the four oral sessions, there were at least 50–60 people in attendance throughout the 2-day event, with at least double the amount of attendees at the poster session. Funding from the ACS-PRF is gratefully acknowledged because it allowed us to invite a number of high-profile international invited speakers to headline the sessions and generate a great deal of attendee interest. The PRF funds were used to cover meeting registration and/or partial travel costs for the following invited speakers:
Invited Speaker Affiliation(s) Amt Reimbursed
Prof. Markus Antonietti Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces $900.00
Prof. Dirk Broer Eindhoven Institute of Tecnology $900.00
Prof. Takashi Kato University of Tokyo $900.00
Prof. Myongsoo Lee Yonsei University $900.00 $3600.00
