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This literature discussion celebrates Dr. Geoffrey W. Coates for being the recipient of the ACS Award in Polymer Chemistry 2026 from the American Chemical Society. The award citation reads: “For the scalable syntheses of biodegradable polymers from renewable feedstocks, of architecturally defined polymers, and of polymers that enable efficient energy storage and conversion.” This LO is based upon the article, "Synthesis of Phenyl-Substituted Poly(3-Hydroxybutyrates) with High and Tunable Glass Transition Temperatures via Sequential Catalytic Transformations." https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.5c18048
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| guiding questions for students | 68.5 KB |
After reading the article and answering the guiding questions, students will be able to....
1) Explain the motivations for synthesizing phenyl-substituted poly(3-hydroxybutyrates) as well as the design of the synthesis using green chemistry principles.
2) Describe the two catalysts delineated in the article for monomer synthesis and polymerization using the Covalent Bond Classification (CBC) method.
3) Invoke mechanistic explanations for experimental results.
4) Describe the instrumentation needed to characterize the novel polymers that were formed.
This LO has not been used yet, but we recommend assigning these questions to the students before class, so that they come prepared to discuss the paper in class.
The article and the guiding questions contain content about polymer chemistry that may not be as familiar to undergraduate students. Some additional resources for helping students become more familiar with polymers include:
Polymer Molecular Weight Distributions: A Tutorial on Transformations between Number Density, Mass Density, and Linear/Logarithmic Axes. Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2025, 64, 7, 3695–3703. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.iecr.4c04233
The Macrogalleria (an older website but still helpful) https://pslc.ws/macrog/maindir.htm
Evaluation
One possible method of evaluation is to collect student answers to the guiding questions before the discussion takes place in class and/or collect student answers after the class discussion and/or collect answers written by small groups during the discussion.
This LO has not been implemented yet.