The prize was presented at the Biennial Meeting of the GDCh Division of Macromolecular Chemistry in Aachen, Germany on September 12th 2022. The award honors outstanding contributions to polymer chemistry. Bert Meijer received the prize for his outstanding and creative contributions to the field of supramolecular polymer chemistry.
As university professor at the department of Chemical Engineering & Chemistry and member of ICMS, Meijer's research interests include self-assembled materials, the non-covalent synthesis of functional supramolecular systems, and functional supramolecular polymers.
Through targeted molecular design and synthesis, he has realized systems in which monomeric units join together to form supramolecular polymeric materials with special properties. Before this work, these properties were thought to be only unique to covalently linked macromolecules.
Supramolecular materials can be easily processed at low temperatures and pressures due to the reversible binding of the building blocks. The tunable nature of these materials opens new applications for these systems. Many of Meijer's strategies are "biomimetic", which means that the principles of biological organization are transferred to synthetic polymeric materials.
His accomplishments are rewarded by the GDCh with the Staudinger Prize. "It is an honor to receive this award. Especially since Hermann Staudinger is the founding father of polymer chemistry, since he described the concept of macromolecules," says Meijer.
Read the announcement by the GDCh (in German).
