On November 14, Professor Tong Zhen gave us an interesting lecture on polymers. The first part of the lecture described the ever-changing polymer materials including the accurate definition of polymers and the methods of synthesizing polymers. In addition, Professor Tong Zhen explained natural organic polymers and various polymers with interesting structures to us. He also talked about the important milestones in the polymer field: Carothers successfully synthesized nylon. Ziegler and Natta discovered Ziegler-Natta catalyst. Polymer has many excellent properties, which also prompted Professor Tong Zhen to research on polymer.
Next, Professor Tong Zhen introduced several famous scientists in the polymer field. H. Staudinger, Father of Modern Polymer Science, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of chain-like macromolecules in 1953. His main achievement is to prove the existence of polymers. PJ Flory put forward the hypothesis of isoactivity of active species in polymerization reaction, working on basic research of polymer methods such as statistical theory and methods of polymer chain conformation, and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1974. Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, who extended the method used for order phenomena in simple systems to complex systems, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1991.
Professor Tong Zhen thinks that the future of polymer materials is bright. The polymer-controlled polymerization currently under study can control the molecular weight, molecular weight distribution, stereoscopic regulation, sequence distribution and so on, so as to obtain homogeneous polymer. In addition, it is possible to achieve precise control of the structure and the interaction of the regulatory system to obtain specific results, freeze the substation state to achieve stable structure, and to achieve the application performance-oriented aggregation structure design. Polymers have gradually become indispensable in aerospace, medical devices, flexible displays and other fields. With the continuous development of polymer technology, the sustainable development and recyclability of polymer materials is emerging.
After the lecture, students had a deeper understanding of the challenges of polymer materials to be solved thus far. Professor Tong Zhen also expressed high hopes for the development and future breakthrough of polymer science.
