Materials for Self-Healing, Anticorrosion, and Biomedicine

Chemists are designers of molecules and materials. Classical chemistry focuses on the generation of new molecules with improved properties. However, the major drawback of our society is that the environment is becoming more and more polluted by the degraded products that we fabricate. To make the dream of a sustainable society comes true, we design new polymers that have a specific function as polymer and another one when they are degraded, i.e. after their lifetime. In our research lab, we develop polymers that can degrade into active molecules that can be used as drugs to cure cancer or corrosion inhibitors to stop corrosion.

Smart Non-Wovens Membranes

We synthesize and use functional nanocontainers as superbricks to build materials with a higher level of structural hierarchy. Nanocontainers are immobilized in nanofibers to yield materials synergistically combining advantages of nanocontainers and nanofibers materials. One of the advantages is that the release profile of encapsulated payloads can be controlled by both the fibers and nanocontainers properties. Furthermore, the nanocontainers-in-nanofibers construction allow for the encapsulation of payloads with different polarities and solubilities, making the system suitable for combined therapy or providing it with efficient antibacterial properties. This new area of research was highlighted recently in a review (Accounts of Chemical Research, 2016, 49, 816).