Combinatorial methods and high-throughput experimentation in synthetic polymer chemistry

Abstract

ABSTRACTCombinatorial chemistry has revolutionized the drug discovery as well as the catalyst discovery and optimization process during the last years. Nowadays, triggered by these developments, combinatorial methods and parallel chemistry also emerge in the field of material and polymer chemistry. Especially the field of polymer research seems to be perfectly suited for these approaches since many parameters can be varied during synthesis, processing, blending, formulation and compounding. Moreover, the screening of interesting parameters, such as molecular weight, polydispersity, polymerization kinetics, viscosity, hardness or stiffness, became feasible only recently.Within this contribution we will describe our strategy to construct a most efficient workflow in the field of combinatorial polymer research. New developments made by our group as well as some general aspects will be discussed.