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Congrats to Lucas for having two papers coming out in one week!

His paper in Advanced Materials Interfaces presents a grafting-to coating approach that yields polymer brushes up to an unprecedented thickness of 19 nm. To this end, an easy-to-apply poly(dopamine) primer layer was optimised to promote binding of a block copolymer with a reactive poly(glycidyl methacrylate) block.

In Lucas’ second paper that came out this week, published in Langmuir, he expanded on this grafting-to method, by demonstrating it can be used on a variety of substrates, and for a range of block copolymers.

Our recent review on Phase Separation in Supramolecular and Covalent Adaptable Networks has been published in Soft Matter. The review covers a broad range of important works and information regarding the developments and applications of phase separation in dynamic polymer networks. It highlights how material properties can be tuned and enhanced, but also discusses the underlying mechanisms behind phase separation. Thanks to Martijn de Heer Kloots, Sybren Schoustra and Joshua Dijksman for bringing this joint project to a successful end.

The article is available here (Open Access).

At the upcoming Dutch Polymer Days, both Annemieke and Simon will present their research:

• On Monday (April 24) Simon will present his research on Covalent Adaptable Networks using Boronate Linkages by incorporating TetraAzaADamantanes.
• Next day (April 25) Annemieke will give a lecture on Self-Healing Antifouling Polymer Brushes.

If you’re attending DPD2023, please check out their lecture!

This week Vahid Asadi Alghalandis joined our group as a postdoctoral researcher. His research will focus on how the concept of phase separation can be used in covalent adaptable networks. Good luck, Vahid!