Currently, most of used polymers are derived from petrochemicals, which not only leads to the depletion of resources, but also accompanies with environmental and social problems. Various sustainable polymers and chiral fine chemicals from renewable resource, such as furfural and vegetable oil, have been developed by using carbonylation polymerization et.al. As an abundant, inexpensive and non-toxic renewable C1 resource, CO2 also has received intense attention in recent decades, and the development of efficient processes for CO2 transformation into useful products is a long-standing goal for chemists. The asymmetric copolymerization CO2 with epoxides for synthesis of CO2-based polycarbonates are known for several decades, but the stereochemistry control of this asymmetric process has long remained elusive. Therefore, most of the polymers are amorphous, and their low thermal resistance makes them difficult to use as structural materials. Recently, we have innovatively designed and synthesized a series of privileged chiral bimetallic catalyst system for the asymmetric copolymerization of meso-epoxides with CO2, and a unique stereo-interaction between isotactic CO2 polymers with different configurations was discovered, and various highly stereo-regular crystalline, and functional CO2-based polycarbonates were afforded. This research is expected to open up a new way to prepare various novel semicrystalline materials with a wide variety of physical properties, degradability and their potential application in biomedical fields.

Prof. Ye Liu received his Ph. D. in Chemical Engineering & Technology (Chemistry) from Dalian University of Technology (DLUT) in 2014, supervised by Prof. Xiaobing Lu. He also holds a B.S. in Science from DLUT. Then he become a lecture and associate professor in State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals, Dalian University of Technology. During 2016-2018, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow in University of Konstanz, Germany, with Prof. Stefan Mecking, funded by Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Currently, he is a full professor in DLUT. His research interests in sustainable polymers synthesis from renewable resource, and coordination polymerization catalysis with a focus on stereochemistry control. Until now, he has published more than 30 scientific papers, including Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Nat. Commun., J. Am. Soc. Chem., and ACS Catal., He was authorized three invention patents in China, and part of patents have been achieved for industrial application. He has received some awards including Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship (Germany) and the First Prize of National Natural Science in Ministry of Education.