Porous Polymers, at the ACS National Meeting, August 16-20, 2009, Washington, DC

Reports: SE 50171-SE: Porous Polymers, at the ACS National Meeting, August 16-20, 2009, Washington, DC

Michael S. Silverstein, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology

The Symposium on "Porous Polymers" was held at the 238th American Chemical Society National Meeting in Washington, DC, August 16-20, 2009. The organizers of the Symposium were Michael S. Silverstein (Technion - Israel Institute of Technology), Neil R. Cameron (University of Durham), Neil McKeown (University of Cardiff), and Marc A. Hillmyer (University of Minnesota), researchers who have been active in the field of porous materials for many years. The sponsors of the Symposium included the ACS Petroleum Research Fund, the ACS Division of Polymeric Materials Science and Engineering (PMSE), and BIA Separations Ltd.

The Symposium began on Sunday afternoon and ended on Wednesday afternoon. There were 16 Invited Speakers, 11 from abroad and 5 from the US. There were and 49 oral contributions during the 6 half-day Sessions of the Symposium. There were 29 international speakers from 10 different countries in Europe, Asia, and Australia. At least 70 participants attended each of the Symposium's sessions. In addition, there were at least 6 posters associated with the Symposium at the Joint PMSE/POLY Poster Session.

The six Sessions in the Symposium were:
• Microporous and Mesoporous
• Mesoporous I
• Mesoporous II
• Macroporous
• Aerogels and PolyHIPE
• PolyHIPE

The Symposium featured up-to-date research and breakthrough results in the field of porous polymer systems. The purpose of the Symposium was to bring together the various disparate communities that work on porous polymeric materials. The Symposium was able to present topics that had similar underlying themes but originated in a variety of research areas with very different perspectives. Some Sessions were organized by size scale, including sessions on microporosity (less than 2 nm), mesoporosity (greater than 2 nm, less than 50 nm), macroporosity (greater than 50 nm). Other Sessions were dedicated to a specific synthesis methodologies including sessions on aerogels and on polyHIPE. The applications for porous polymers that were discussed included low-k dielectrics, membranes, catalysis, absorbents, patterning, drug delivery, chromatography, structural materials, and tissue engineering. The interactions between the investigators working in these very different research directions naturally led to the exchange of novel ideas that will ultimately produce technologies of benefit to society.

The ACS National Meeting was the appropriate venue to hold this Symposium since the National Meeting venue enhances access to these discussions by bringing together an enormous number of chemists, physicists, materials scientists, and chemical engineers from all over the world, since the PMSE division publishes the Symposium presentations as detailed Preprints, and since the Symposium is widely advertised on an international scale. The resulting large gathering of researchers from different fields was ideal for this Symposium whose goal was to bring together disparate research communities. The highly respected international and US speakers, the support by a variety of funding sources, the publication of the presentations as Preprints, and the advertisement of the Symposium were all instrumental to its overwhelming success. This success led to the decision to hold a third "Porous Polymers" symposium at the 242nd ACS National Meeting in Denver, CO, August 28 to September 1, 2011.

The organizers gratefully acknowledge the Petroleum Research Fund's generous travel support for the Invited Speakers from abroad. The PRF's support was absolutely essential - it allowed us to bring together world-class scientists and engineers and thus made a key contribution to the Symposium's overwhelming success.