Our first speaker of the New Year is Dr. Niamh Fox, a lecturer in Polymer Science in the Department of Materials at Manchester University.

Her talk ‘Stretched to breaking point – when is this a good thing for polymer materials?’ will introduce us to polymer mechanochemistry.

Niamh says “Polymer materials are used in every aspect of our lives due to their strength and how easy they are to process. The field of polymer mechanochemistry examines what happens when we stretch these polymeric materials by applying mechanical force. Under the correct conditions this can lead to the breakage of chemical bonds within polymers which can in turn drive chemical transformations. This talk will introduce the area of polymer mechanochemistry and discuss the importance of how these materials are processed.”

The process can be illustrated thus:

(a) force-induced bond breakage in a stretched polymer chain

(b) force-induced mechanophore activation in a stretched polymer chain leading to altered chemical properties

Niamh started out as an undergraduate in chemistry in Trinity College Dublin where she first became interested in polymer materials. She stayed on at Trinity to do a PhD in materials chemistry examining fluorescent polymers for sensors and lighting applications. After this she moved to the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) which is part of the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. Here she researched how fluid based manufacturing processes altered polymer properties, in particular focusing on polymer mechanochemistry. Following on from this she took on a second postdoc position at the IfM examining how manufacturing processes alter materials properties during the design of drug delivery devices for hard-to-treat cancers. This project was part of a large multi-institution collaboration with input from all areas of the device design journey. In November 2023 she joined the Department of Materials at the University of Manchester as a Lecturer in Polymer Science.”