Polycarbonates and polyethers, epoxide co- and homopolymers, have desirable properties for use in nanobiotechnology.  Aliphatic polycarbonates are ideal sacrificial materials for nanofabrication.  Polyethers based on ethylene oxide are biocompatible and have been used to investigate the inhibition of mast cell degranulation, which is initiated by multivalent crossing of IgE-receptor complexes.  Catalysts play a major role in the efficient and controlled polymerization of epoxides to obtain these materials.  This talk will include an overview of previous work in the area of polycarbonate catalysis and applications of the resulting polymers.  In addition, new ways to make polyethers, which have important biological applications, will be discussed.

Kathryn Peretti graduated with a B.A. in Chemistry and Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2002.  While at Penn she worked on the synthesis of potassium organotrifluoroborates for Suzuki-Miyaura coupling reactions.  She started graduate school at Cornell University in the fall of 2002, where she began work for Professor Geoffrey Coates.  In the past four years she has been developing cobalt catalysts with salen-type ligand framework for epoxide/CO₂ copolymerization and, more recently, epoxide homopolymerization.