Bettina has been awarded the excellence fellowship of the faculty of Technical Chemistry of TU Wien, for her MSc research on hydrothermal polymerization. She and Elisabeth Kolar of Karin Föttinger’s group were the only awardees this year. We are very proud that both prizes go to the Institute of Materials Chemistry. [Read more]

Bettina and Miriam will be attending the Polymer Physics GRC in Massachusetts this week. Bettina will present a poster on our research on hydrothermal polymerizations, and Miriam will present the groups’ current results in solid-state polymerizations. We are looking forward to a great conference! [Read more]

Sebastian España Orozco joined the team for his MSc thesis. His project focuses on mechanistic aspects of solid-state polymerizations, and will be co-supervised by Peter Blaha, Dept. of Theoretical Chemistry, TU Vienna. We are glad to have Sebastian and wish him a lot of success for his research! [Read more]

Our recent article “Geomimetics for Green Polymer Synthesis: Highly Ordered Polyimides via Hydrothermal Techniques” is featured on the cover of the current issue of Polymer Chemistry! The article summarizes Bettina’s results on outstandingly crystalline polyimides synthesized under hydrothermal conditions. [Read more]

Our research on hydrothermal polymerization has been highlighted by an article in the Austrian daily newspaper Der Standard. The article “Der Kunststofftrick mit dem Druckkochtopf” (engl. “The plastics-trick with the pressure cooker”) can be found here. [Read more]

Miriam will present our work on solid-state transformations in the framework of the “Konstanz Kolloid Klub” at the University of Konstanz, Germany, hosted by Denis Gebauer. The talk entitled “Anisotropic Homopolymer Particles via Solid-State Polymerization” will be held on Wednesday May 7^th. [Read more]

Catarina will be presenting her work on Calcium Phosphate crystallization at the “8th Austrian Workshop of Inorganic Chemistry” in Graz. She will give her talk “Biomimicry of Bone Biomineralization for Materials Chemistry” on Monday April 14^th. [Read more]

Our latest contribution “Geomimetics for Green Polymer Synthesis: Highly Ordered Polyimides via Hydrothermal Techniques” has been accepted for publication in Polymer Chemistry! [Read more]

Our work on hydrothermal polymerization has been featured in a recent press release by TU Vienna. The article explains our work on obtaining highly crystalline polymers in nothing but hot water in layman terms. [Read more]

Our new stirred high-temperature high-pressure reactor has been installed. The 1 L vessel will allow for carrying out hydrothermal polymerizations in considerable volumes. In addition, the reactor has an inlet for our high-temperature FT-IR-ATR probe, which will enable the real-time monitoring of chemical transformations under hydrothermal conditions. We are very excited about our first experiments with the reactor and we very much appreciate the financial support of TU Wien. [Read more]