On the morning of October 14, at the invitation of Prof. Rongchun Zhang, Professor Mikihiro Hayashi of Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan, gave an online seminar on the topic of Potential of the vitrimers as sustainable materials to the students of Soft Matter Institute. Professor Mikihiro Hayashi introduced the development and thermodynamic characteristics of polyester type vitrimers from the origin of vitrimer. Then, he well showed the application potentials of vitrimers as a sustainable material via extensive research results.
Vitrimer, as one of the most effective ways to prolong the service life of polymer materials, improve the recycling ratio, and help sustainable development, has become one of the hottest research fields in the past decade. Professor Mikihiro Hayashi has been focusing on polyester vitrimers, and has achieved rich research achievements. In his group, the influence of the formation of ion-rich domains on the properties of glass polymers was studied by using vitrimers prepared from ionic components. A kind of amorphous polyester containing COOH side group was synthesized and reacted with double epoxy crosslinking agent to form a network. The samples were further thermally annealed to induce the aggregation of Zn2+ ion groups. It was proved that the degree of ion aggregation can change the bond exchange characteristics. However, the autocatalytic polyester glassy polymer containing tertiary amine group on the network chain overcomes the problem of slow bond exchange. Due to the high fluidity of amine catalyst, the bond exchange rate in the glassy material is more than 20 times faster than that in other autocatalytic polyester glassy materials.
Mikihiro Hayashi received his Ph.D. degree from Nagoya University (Prof. Yushu Matsushita group) in 2015. During his doctor course, he had been selected as a JSPS research fellow (DC2) and experienced researches in ESPCI Paris-Tech (Prof. Ludwik Leibler) and in Shanghai Jiao Tong University (Prof. Xinyuan Zhu). He then re-joined Ludwik Leibler’s group as a postdoc, and did another postdoc in Prof. Masatoshi Tokita in Tokyo institute of technology. In 2017, he became an assistant professor in Prof. Akinori Takasu group (Nagoya institute of technology), and currently manages his own laboratory as a PI. His research interest is the design of functional cross-linked materials.