Polymer Architecture ‐ From Structure to Functional Control

Abstract

The 1st European Chemistry Congress was held in Budapest 27–31 August, 2006, where 17 symposia on various areas of chemistry were presented. All the symposia were intended to be one day events including a keynote and 5 to 10 invited lectures, a few oral presentations and a poster session. This congress became a great melting pot of today's chemistry with more than 2300 participants representing 57 countries from all over the world. The symposium on “Polymer Architecture – From Structure to Functional Control” chaired and co-chaired by two of us (K. Müllen and B. Iván) received an unexpected high level of interest during the organization period, and so the chair and co-chair recommended the organization of a 3-day “Polymer Architecture” Symposium rather than a 1-day event in the framework of the congress. The congress organizers, including Prof. Gábor Náray-Szabó and Prof. Peter Kündig, supported this idea. Consequently, a 3 day Symposium on “Polymer Architecture” was held from August 30 to September 1, 2006. This symposium attracted nearly 300 abstract submissions; therefore, the “Polymer Architecture – From Structure to Functional Control” Symposium was held in two parallel oral sessions and two poster sessions. Five invited lectures and four special lectures were presented in addition to Prof. K. Müllen's keynote lecture. The rest of the program included 116 oral and 159 poster presentations. The Symposium on “Polymer Architecture” was the largest among the 17 symposia at this 1st European Chemistry Congress. The interest in and the success of this 3 day symposium are clear indications that polymer chemistry and related material science is definitely a leading and determining field of chemistry today. This symposium took place in a friendly and stimulating atmosphere. Presentation topics covered the “polymer architecture” subject from a broad range of perspectives, including polymerization, structure-property relationships, high-tech activities, biomaterials, nanosciences, life sciences, energy, environmental and commodity areas, etc. The majority of the roughly 300 participants were young students and scientists. Innovative, new, and mostly unpublished results were presented in conjunction with intensive discussions in both the oral and poster sessions. The success of this symposium, reflecting the importance of the ongoing research in polymer architectures, led to the idea of publishing a special issue on this topic in this journal. Those who accepted our invitation submitted manuscripts dealing with their original research results in this field. As the table of contents clearly indicates, the papers in this volume cover a broad range of polymer architecture topics. A review on functionalized polyelectrolytes for fuel cell application is included, indicating the key role of functional polymer membranes in this energy related area. In addition, polymer catalysis and the synthesis of well-defined polymer structures are the subject of several papers dealing particularly with metallocene catalyzed polymerization of olefins. Polymer topology is a crucial factor that leads to a large number of specialty applications. Branched polyolefines, star-shaped polystyrene catalyst supports, novel star polymers by quasiliving carbocationic polymerization and by the combination of ATRP with click chemistry are reported. Structure-property relations of hyperbranched polymers, this rapidly emerging class of macromolecules with branched architecture, are dealt with in one of the studies. A glimpse into the rich new possibilities for functional nanoscale and macroscopic polymer objects by self-assembly and supramolecular interactions governed by the structure of the polymer chains is also delineated in several papers in this issue. The multidisciplinary interface between synthetic polymer science, biology, biotechnology and life sciences is also presented herein; examples of enzymatic polymer syntheses, synthetic polymer-peptide conjugates and preparation on functional polymer media for protein separation are discussed. Two studies concern special polymer structures with potentials in optics and electronics applications. Finally, the editors of this special issue would like to express their sincere thanks to Dr. Mara Staffilani, without whose enthusiastic support, help and work in editing this volume would not have been possible.