SMU chemist wins prestigious NSF Career Award

Research focuses on new tools that enable making materials for chemical detection, tissue engineering and electronics

13-Aug-2015 - USA

SMU chemist Nicolay Tsarevsky has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, expected to total $650,000 over five years, to fund his research into new methods of creating polymers - whose uses range from fluorescent materials to drug carriers, to everyday technologies.

aTsarevsky, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry in SMU's Dedman College of Humanities and Science, is a polymer chemist and the adviser to seven doctoral students who assist in his research. Prior to 20 years ago, the lab techniques used to make polymers with any precision approaching that of nature were very limited or didn't exist. The Tsarevsky group specializes in developing methods to make large polymeric molecules in a lab with desired shapes, sizes, and functionalities.

"We make polymers that have the ability to kill bacteria on contact, and self-healing materials that you could break and that would heal by themselves," Tsarevsky says. "I like to think of our work as trying to design and control the architecture of very large molecules."

To make complex macromolecules, Tsarevsky took advantage of the special behavior (reactivity) of a group of compounds that contain hypervalent chemical bonds. These bonds are weaker than other "classical" chemical bonds, and can be broken in two different ways as well as reconstructed. The atoms they connect can be "swapped" enabling the construction of new materials that couldn't be made otherwise. Several elements in the Periodic Table are able to form hypervalent bonds, but Tsarevsky feels iodine is one of the most attractive, in part because it's less toxic than many alternatives.

Many of the current methods for making polymers use toxic heavy metals. The toxic impurities present in the final materials must be removed at potentially significant expense. The hypervalent iodine compounds Tsarevsky is employing aren't just less toxic, they also allow for processes to be carried out using fewer steps than traditional methods to yield the final functional products. Another chemical element that also is promising for its diverse chemistry and lack of toxicity is bismuth, which Tsarevsky would like to explore in his future research.

"The NSF CAREER funding is absolutely essential," Tsarevsky says. "Some of the money will go to support doctoral students conducting the research, some will go support supplies or equipment. Without this support, it would be extremely difficult or impossible to do these studies."

https://www.chemeurope.com/en/news/154089/smu-chemist-wins-prestigious-nsf-career-award.html