We are a polymer chemistry research group led by Prof. Nico Bruns at the Department of Chemistry of the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany.
Two additional branches of our research groups are hosted by the Adolphe Merkle Institute (AMI) of the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and by the Materials and Computational Section of the Department of Pure and Applied Chemistry of the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, UK.
Our research in the realm of Sustainable Functional Polymers wisely combines synthetic polymer chemistry with the engineering of proteins and enzymes. Via this approach, some of the best aspects of two different domains of macromolecular chemistry are combined in order to exploit the catalytic power of enzymes, to create novel nanosystems and to develop materials with unprecedented new functions. Four lines of research illustrate our strategy:
- Biocatalytic Atom Transfer Radical Polymerizations (bioATRP)
- Polymerization-amplified malaria diagnostics
- Block copolymer vesicles (polymersomes) and protein cages as nanoreactors and nanocapsules
- Bio-inspired materials