Dr. Jimmy Mays:
ORNL Division of Chemical Sciences;
UT Department of Chemistry
Room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) are gaining a name for themselves for their potential to replace the stinky, messy, polluting, toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) used in making polymers.
Jimmy Mays, a polymer synthesis expert new to the Distinguished Scientist Program in January 2001, uses RTILs to make block copolymers—compounds with a long stretch of one polymer attached to a long stretch of another. In fact, some of Mays’ polymers cannot be made any other way. Mays can even create patterns of individual units in the chain, just to see how the design will affect what the material can do.
A 'scientific extrovert,' Mays has a reputation for establishing highly productive collaborations with leading scientists and engineers worldwide. He specializes in creating model compounds, where the structure and architecture are very well known. Then, he works with engineers, physicists and other scientists to find out how that structure affects a material’s properties.
Making polymers with ionic (charged) liquids is an environmentally green process. RTILs have no vapor pressure, so they don’t vaporize, cause air pollution or burst into flames the way volatile organic compounds tend to do. And they are continuously recyclable. Mays has found the environmentally benign liquids useful in making commercially important polymers, such as Styrofoam and Plexiglas, at ten times the speed, and with higher molecular weights, than with traditional volatile organic compounds. Making them faster is an economic advantage; higher molecular weight means the chains within the material are longer, and the material will be of higher quality.
Mays also develops 'super elastomers' capable of more than twice the elasticity found in the best commercial thermoplastic elastomers (recyclable rubber) available today. His studies of the form and structure show that while specimens with more branches at a fixed architecture and composition exhibit poorer long-range order they have better mechanical properties. His results are contrary to the widely accepted belief that good long-range order is necessary to optimize the properties of the material.
Mays received the University of Alabama at Birmingham highest arts and sciences faculty award, the Caroline P. and Charles W. Ireland Prize for Scholarship Distinction, and was named a UAB University Scholar in 2001.
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