URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Fall_2017_Melissa-McCarthy

Liquid nitrogen evaporating from a vacuum flask.

Synthesizing polymer in an air-free environment.

Removing organic solvent under reduced pressure.

Visualizing catalysts with UV light during purification by thin-layer chromatography.

is entirely biodegradable. Reducing the cost of these materials that society uses so extensively requires approaching the problem from every possible angle. That includes making catalysts that do not even want to form a polymer. One of Kiesewetter’s coworkers changed the way they were approaching their synthesis and found out that certain catalysts prefer to de-polymerize plastic. “This was very exciting for us,” Kiesewetter says. “Besides discovering something people had not known before, imagine being able to use one catalyst one way to transform monomer to polymer and another way to take it back to starting material!” Then, you can take bottles out of the ocean before they ever get there.

whole story unravels. The story in this case is a detailed understanding of how molecules interacting with each other on a microscopic scale can produce huge amounts of useful material. The job of a polymerization catalyst is to link thousands or millions of individual units (called monomers) together to make a polymer. “Polymers,” he says, “are like little data tapes that remember the story of how they were made. If we can understand how the story was written, then you can rewrite the story and make an entirely new material.” In Kiesewetter’s line of exploratory research, the research application can often be a byproduct. His team recently asked a question: What happens when we replace one atom in our monomer for another? The result is a new type of polyester that behaves like rubber but

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