Organic Chemistry Seminar: Professor Yan Xia, Stanford University

About the Seminar

"High Performance Polymer Materials Enabled by Overlooked Chemistry"

High performance polymer materials are essential for tackling challenges in sustainability and emergent technology. Inspired by conventionally overlooked chemical reactivities, our lab has unlocked new chemical strategies for the development of unique polymer materials. These chemistries include efficient annulation reactions to yield microporous polymers with excellent selectivity as membrane materials for energy-efficient chemical separations; a new modality for olefin metathesis to produce regenerative elastomers and thermosets featuring on-demand curing and deconstruction as well as tunable thermomechanical properties. I will discuss our journey from curiosity-driven chemical discovery to materials optimization and paths toward applications.

About the Speaker

Professor Xia, whose research operates at the interface of chemistry and polymer science, was educated at Peking University (BS), McMaster (MS), and Caltech (PhD), and worked at Dow Chemical and MIT before joining the Stanford Chemistry faculty in 2013.

The Xia Group integrates organic and polymer chemistry, materials characterizations, and engineering techniques to create and control organic materials with tailored structures and functions. They have developed microporous ladder polymers, force-responsive molecules, conjugated polycyclic hydrocarbons, and dynamic hydrogels and polyelectrolytes to investigate fundamental questions in molecular science and address challenges in sustainability and emergent technology.