Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5400-8601

Date of Award

Winter 2022

Document Type

Thesis (Master's)

Department or Program

Chemistry

First Advisor

Katherine A. Mirica

Abstract

The long-term goal of this thesis is to design novel chemical protective garments that both shield and sense for chemical warfare agents. The overarching hypothesis of this work is that joining textiles with a chemically responsive temporary adhesive will reduce the permeability of and detect hazardous analytes across fabric boundaries. Work towards achieving this goal and testing this hypothesis is separated into two chapters. The first chapter reports the development of a self-immolative polymer, poly(phthalaldehyde), into a stimuli-responsive temporary adhesive. Developing poly(phthalaldehyde) as a robust adhesive that rapidly releases substrates would be a significant and novel contribution to the fields of self-immolative polymers and temporary adhesives. The second chapter investigates the serendipitous and unexpected observation of fluorescent emission from linear poly(phthalaldehyde) and explores the potential for using this polymer as a fluorescent sensor. Work in this chapter aims to answer the numerous questions that arose from this surprising observation about the structure-property relationships that enable fluorescence.

Available for download on Saturday, November 16, 2024

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