Chemical Biology and Biologics 2019

International conference on Chemical Biology and Biologics
Chemical Biology 2019, November 23-24, 2019

About the conference:

Larix International proudly announces two days conference to bring together scientists from national and international universities, institutes and industry to share the recent developments in the areas of chemical biology and biologics. The conference sets the stage for the dissemination and exchange of new developments in diverse, hot fields within Chemical Biology and biologics, being the platform for inspiration, collaboration, and networking for researchers in academia and industry. The overall program is carefully structured around four thematic sessions encompassing chemical therapeutics, disease mechanisms, and models, biologics, and biosimilars and regulatory sciences. Eminent speakers representing academia and Industry will be delivering scholarly lectures along with interactive sessions. Young researchers will have an excellent opportunity to present and discuss their work in every session of the conference and also in the form of poster presentations. The conference will provide a suitable platform to learn and share new knowledge in the domains of chemical biology and biologics for the advancement of translational health sciences. We aim to provide the possibility for every chemical biologist to meet and discuss with peers, from tool development to biological applications, from computational drug design to synthetic chemistry.

Why Attend Chemical Biology 2019

The International Conference on Chemical Biology and Biologics is a unique platform for academic and industrial experts in the world and is the flagship annual event. Your participation in Biologics 2019 will, amongst others, enable you to:

• Hear plenary lectures by stellar speakers who are leading drug discovery developments.

• Meet Invited speakers who are world leaders in their fields.

• Present your scientific results to the most relevant audience either as a poster or oral presentations.

• Get global perspectives in the fields of Chemical biology and biologics.

• Attend networking events on the first day of the conference.

• Become a biologics 2019 sponsor -Showcase yourself to the world.

• Present products, services or activities offered by companies & scientific organizations.

Participate in Highlight events that focus on current challenges and controversies.

Making Gyroid Polymer Films to Speed up Proton Conduction

Proton exchange membranes (PEMs) are essential to the functionality of fuel cells. They conduct protons in electrolytes and drive electricity generation by oxidizing fuels. Following the success of Nafion^® –– a family of commercial proton-conductive fluoropolymers –– materials researchers around the globe are developing innovative PEMs with high proton conductivities and affordable prices.

A group of Japanese researchers has recently synthesized self-standing polymer films with a gyroid nanostructure. These films possess two unique characteristics that other PEMs rarely have: a high proton conductivity in the order of 10^-1 S/cm and retention of the conductivity across a wide temperature range (20-120 °C

The authors used a tailor-made macromolecule, Diene-GZI (Figure 1a), as the building block. It had an amphipathic structure, with one end being a hydrophilic zwitterionic group and another end of a hydrophobic alkyl chain. When mixed with bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide and water, multiple Diene-GZI molecules could assemble together into a gyroid network –– an infinitely periodic minimal surface (Figure 1b). After the self-assembly, ultra-violet-irradiation-induced polymerization solidified the morphology of the gyroid nanostructure

The high proton conductivity of the polymer film originated from its three-dimensional gyroid structure. Since the gyroid surface was densely coated with the hydrophilic zwitterionic chains, the film could readily uptake as high as 15.6 wt.% of water at a relative humidity of 90%. The adsorbed water layers formed a three-dimensional continuous pathway along the gyroid surface, serving as proton-conduction expressways and resulting in a high conductivity in the order of 10^-1 S/cm. Due to the strong binding force between water and the zwitterionic groups, heating the polymer film to 120 °C did not decrease the water content significantly, and thus, the proton conductivity remained high. Additionally, the control films with no gyroid structures were unable to compete with the gyroid film in terms of proton conductivities within the measured temperature range 

This work highlights the critical role of rational design of raw materials to augment the proton conductivities of PEMs. The advantage of the gyroid phase in speeding up ion diffusion could also inspire innovative materials in applications demanding ultrafast ion transport, e.g., supercapacitor electrodes.

by

Tianyu Liu