Catenated Polymers: Why and How?

 

Catenated Polymers: Why and How?

 

Date: 6^th January, 2026 (Tuesday)

Time: 5:30 - 6:30 pm (HKT)

 

Venue: Lecture Theatre P1, Chong Yuet Ming Chemistry Building

 

 

School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering

Shanghai Jiao Tong University

 

Dr. Zhang Shaodong is a Distinguished Professor at the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He graduated from Zhengzhou University in 2006. He obtained his Ph.D. in Polymer Physics and Chemistry from Sorbonne University in France in 2012. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania (2013-2015), followed by a postdoctoral position at Imperial College London (2015). To date, Dr. Zhang has published over 50 papers in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A., J. Am. Chem. Soc., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Nat. Commun., etc. He has been honored with several awards and grants, such as the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellowship and Distinguished Young Scholar Fund from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).

 

Unlike conventional polymers and supramolecular polymers whose monomers are connected by covalent bonds and transient interactions, respectively, catenated polymers are linked by mechanical bonds that interlock their monomers. This class of polymers confers a combination of molecular mobility and structural integrity. However, research on such polymer systems is still in its early stages, and fundamental questions regarding their polymerization mechanisms, synthetic strategies, structural diversity, and structure–property relationships have yet to be systematically understood.

 

This presentation will begin by elucidating the differences between catenated polymers and conventional polymers from the perspectives of topological structure and reaction mechanisms, highlighting the scientific significance of developing such systems. Building upon our preliminary understanding of the polymerization mechanism, we will then propose a synthetic strategy for directly constructing catenated polymers from reactive precursors and will preliminarily explore the distinct physical properties of these polymers, which deviate from traditional scaling laws.