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SUMMARY:Modern Approaches to Functional and Sustainable Thermoplastics
LOCATION:Chemistry A101
TZID:America/Denver
DTSTART:20220404T160000
UID:2026-04-28-17-20-29@natsci.colostate.edu
DTSTAMP:20260428T172029
Description:About the Seminar:\n\nPlastics are the largest synthetic consum
 er product in the world\, with an annual production of over 360 million me
 tric tons annually. Despite the structural diversity enabled by modern adv
 ances in polymer synthesis\, greater than 60% of world plastic production 
 remains dominated by polyolefins. These high-volume\, low-cost engineering
  thermoplastics are made from a small sub-set of petroleum derived monomer
 s and demonstrate diverse thermomechanical properties\, attractive chemica
 l resistance\, and excellent processability. Creating sustainable material
 s that compete with the performance and value proposition of polyolefins i
 s a grand challenge for the field of polymer science. The goal of research
  in the Leibfarth group is to develop synthetic methods that transform rea
 dily available starting materials into functional and sustainable thermopl
 astics with molecular-level precision. This goal informs our two complemen
 tary approaches that seek to 1) leverage chemo- and regioselective C–H f
 unctionalization of polyolefins to enhance the properties of these venerab
 le materials and 2) develop stereoselective polymerization methods that en
 gender emergent polymer properties from simple chemical building blocks. T
 hese concepts have resulted in platform synthetic methods that enhance the
  thermomechanical\, adhesion\, and transport properties of polyolefins whi
 le also uncovering mechanistic insights that broadly inform synthetic meth
 od development.\n\nAbout the Speaker:\n\nFrank Leibfarth attended the Univ
 ersity of South Dakota\, where he was a Goldwater Scholar and graduated in
  2008 with degrees in Chemistry and Physics. In that same year\, he began 
 a Ph.D. program in chemistry at the University of California Santa Barbara
  under the direction of Professor Craig J. Hawker. In 2013\, Frank receive
 d the NSF Science\, Engineering\, and Education for Sustainability fellows
 hip to pursue his postdoctoral studies at Massachusetts Institute of Techn
 ology under the direction of Professor Timothy F. Jamison. He began his in
 dependent career in 2016 at the University of North Carolina\, where he is
  an assistant professor in the Chemistry Department. The overarching goal 
 of the Leibfarth group is to discover new functional materials\, understan
 d their structure–property relationships\, and ultimately provide tools 
 for chemists\, biologists\, and engineers to harness the vast potential of
  synthetic macromolecules. To accomplish these goals\, his group leverages
  polymer chemistry\, organic chemistry\, and continuous flow chemistry to 
 provide potentially useful solutions to challenges in sustainability and h
 uman health. 4:00 pm
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