Reika Katsumata Seminar

Designing polymer materials that rearrange their structures in response to specific stimuli is essential for advancing toward a sustainable society. Among various dynamic bonds, radical-based addition-fragmentation-transfer (AFT) of allyl sulfides is unique due to 1) excellent thermal stability, 2) fast exchange rates, and 3) tailorable stimuli. This talk introduces AFT of allyl sulfides can be leveraged to relax stress in polymer coatings, recycle/upcycle vinyl-derived polymers, and improve ultrasound welding of immiscible polymers.

Reika Katsumata is an assistant professor in the Polymer Science and Engineering Department at UMass Amherst, who received a B.E. in Organic and Polymeric Materials from the Tokyo Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. Leading the Katsumata Research Group at the intersection of chemical engineering and materials science, she focuses on revealing material performance that is otherwise impossible by designing extremely confined soft/hard interfaces. Her three main thrusts involve leveraging rapid thermal annealing for functional porous materials and defect-healing/doping 2D materials, developing reprocessible crosslinked polymers through ultrasound-mediated bond-exchange reactions for sustainability, and laying the foundation by understanding polymer dynamics and wettability at interfaces.