Hosted by: Wenyu Huang

Title: "Polymers on metal nanoparticles: from surface coverage to catalysis"

Abstract: 

Loading catalytic metals on polymer supports to produce “soluble” catalysts has long been used in catalysis. Harnessing synergies at the interface of polymers and inorganic catalytic components is, however, still challenging. Our group works on developing new synthetic methodologies of hybrid polymer/inorganic materials (metal ions and nanoparticles) with well-defined chemical compositions, nanostructures and synergetic functionalities. We seek to understand the role of polymers in tuning the interface of hybrid materials in order to control their accessibility and essentially tune the catalytic properties of inorganic components. My talk will show our recent effort on, i) the development of new synthetic methods to prepare polymer-tethered nanoparticles and explore the role of polymer tethers to design the surface patterning; and ii) control over the in the stabilizing metal nanoparticles in electrocatalysis and accessibility of nanoparticles or metal ions that are incorporated in polymer frameworks. I will introduce the concept of polymer-tethered nanoparticles and the use of polymer ligands to control the surface patterning of gold nanoparticles and nanorods. The add-on functionality of polymer to hybrid materials will be deliberated in the context of electrocatalytic conversion of CO₂. The incorporation of metal ions within polymeric frameworks as functional metallopolymers to mimic natural metalloenzymes will be discussed at the end.

Bio:

Jie He is currently a Professor of Chemistry and Polymer Program at the University of Connecticut. His group focuses on the design of hybrid materials of polymers and inorganic materials (metal ions, clusters, and nanoparticles) being capable of catalyzing the activation of small molecules as inspired by nature.