100th Anniversary of Macromolecular Science Viewpoint: The Role of Hydrophobicity in Polymer Phenomena.

The seemingly simple notion of the hydrophobic effect can be viewed from multiple angles involving theory, simulation, and experiments. This viewpoint examines five attributes of predictive models to enhance synthetic efforts as well as experimental methods to quantify hydrophobicity. In addition, we compare existing predictive models against experimental data for polymer surface tension, lower critical solution temperature, solution self-assembly morphology, and degradation behavior.

It is Better with Salt: Aqueous Ring-Opening Metathesis Polymerization at Neutral pH.

Aqueous ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) is a powerful tool for polymer synthesis under environmentally friendly conditions, functionalization of biomacromolecules, and preparation of polymeric nanoparticles via ROMP-induced self-assembly (ROMPISA). Although new water-soluble Ru-based metathesis catalysts have been developed and evaluated for their efficiency in mediating cross metathesis (CM) and ring-closing metathesis (RCM) reactions, little is known with regards to their catalytic activity and stability during aqueous ROMP. Here, we investigate the influence of solution pH, the presence of salt additives, and catalyst loading on ROMP monomer conversion and catalyst lifetime.