2018 Canadian Catalysis Lectureship Award Lecture
Dr. Zhibin Ye
Department of Chemical & Materials Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

FRIDAY APRIL 5, 15H

Local M-1020

Chain architecture or topology of polymers is a critically important macromolecular structural parameter governing intrinsically their physical properties and applications.  The rapid developments in polymerization techniques, particularly “living”/controlled polymerization techniques, in the past two decades have enabled the precision synthesis of novel polymers having a broad class of complex yet well-defined chain architectures from different monomer stocks.  For polyethylenes and other polyolefins synthesized by catalytic coordination polymerization, the design of their complex chain architecture/topology, however, has only started very recently because of the relatively limited advancements in the catalytic ‘‘living’’ olefin polymerization technique.  In this regard, the versatile Pd–diimine catalysts have provided some unprecedented opportunities due to their outstanding features as shown in the speaker’s works. In this lecture, the speaker will introduce some of the works carried out in his laboratories on the design and synthesis of a range of Pd–diimine-catalysts that enable the synthesis of a novel class of polyethylenes having new complex yet well-defined chain architectures with the use of catalytic “living” polymerization technique.

Biography of Dr. Zhibin Ye

Dr. Zhibin Ye is a Professor at Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of Concordia University (Montreal, Canada). Previously, he was a Professor of Chemical Engineering and a Canada Research Chair in Polymer Nanomaterials at Bharti School of Engineering of Laurentian University (Sudbury, Canada).  He received his Bachelor and Master’s degrees from Zhejiang University (China) in 1996 and 1999, respectively, and his PhD degree from McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario) in 2004, with all in chemical engineering.  He started his independent academic career as an Assistant Professor at Laurentian University in 2004, and was promoted to Associate Professor and Professor in 2009 and 2012, respectively, at Laurentian.  He moved to Concordia University in 2017. He received the 2018 Canadian Catalysis Lectureship Award from Catalysis Division of Chemical Institute of Canada for his research works on catalytic polymerization. He received other research awards, including Ontario Premier’s Early Researcher Award (2007), Canada Research Chair (installed in 2011 and renewed in 2015), inaugural Faculty of Science and Engineering Research Excellence Award (2011), and NSERC DAS Award (2015). Dr. Ye was inducted as a Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) in 2016.