BACKGROUND The area of biodegradable/sustainable polymers is one of increasing importance in the 21st Century due to their positive environmental characteristics. Lewis acidic metal centres are currently one of the most popular choices for the initiator for the polymerisation. Thus, in this paper we report the synthesis and characterisation of a series of monometallic homopiperazine Ti(IV) comp...

Spatial-temporal flexibility of the actin filament network (F-actin) is essential for all basic cellular functions and is governed by a stochastic dynamic model. In this model, actin filaments that randomly polymerise from a pool of free actin are bundled with other filaments and severed by ADF/cofilin. The fate of the severed fragments is not known. It has been proposed that the fragments are ...

Anomalous self-assembly of the Aβ peptide into fibrillar amyloid deposits is strongly correlated with the development of Alzheimer's disease. Aβ fibril extension follows a template guided "dock and lock" mechanism where polymerisation is catalysed by the fibrillar ends. Using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) and quenched hydrogen-deuterium exchange NMR (H/D-exchange NMR), we have analysed the fi...

Polyphosphate (polyP) binds to fibrin(ogen) and alters fibrin structure, generating a heterogeneous network composed of 'knots' interspersed by large pores. Here we show platelet-derived polyP elicits similar structural changes in fibrin and examine the mechanism by which polyP alters fibrin structure. Polymerisation of fibrinogen with thrombin and CaCl2 was studied using spinning disk confocal...

Polymerisationen. Philipp Gerdt und Armido Studer berichten in ihrem Forschungsartikel (e202206964) über eine Methode für die Synthese von funktionalisierten alternierenden Copolymeren durch radikalische Polymerisation mit reversibler Deaktivierung.

A quaternary amine end functionalised diblock copolymer (PtBuA-b-PNIPAM) has been synthesised using RAFT polymerisation and shown to undergo a thermally induced morphology transition from micelles to vesicles, as evidenced by TEM, AFM, SLS and DLS analyses.

Herein we report the synthesis and characterisation of a series of Zr(IV) 2,2'-bipyrrolidine-salan derived complexes and their exploitation for the ring opening polymerisation of rac-lactide to afford highly isotactically enriched polymers.

The C3-symmetric uranium(iv) and cerium(iv) complexes Me3SiOM(OArP)3, M = U (1), Ce (2), OArP = OC6H2-6-tBu-4-Me-2-PPh2, have been prepared and the difference between these 4f and 5f congeners as initiators for the ring opening polymerisation (ROP) of l-lactide is compared. The poorly controlled reactivity of the homoleptic analogue U(OArP)4 (3) demonstrates the importance of the M-OSiMe3 initi...

We investigate the impact of the non-uniform spatio-temporal conversion, intrinsic to photopolymerisation, in the context of light-driven 3D printing of polymers. The polymerisation kinetics of a series of model acrylate and thiol-ene systems, both neat and doped with a light-absorbing dye, is investigated experimentally and analysed according to a descriptive coarse-grained model for photopoly...

The fatigue failure of bone cement, leading to loosening of the stem, is likely to be one mode of failure of cemented total hip replacements. There is strong evidence that cracks in the cement are initiated at voids which act as stress risers, particularly at the cement-stem interface. The preferential formation of voids at this site results from shrinkage during polymerisation and the initiati...