ACS honours Dr. Carl Willis and Prof. Timothy Long

In the past ten years, the collaboration between Dr. Carl Willis, Prof. Timothy Long, and the students from Virginia Tech paved the way for the development of two new Kraton product families including sulfonated block copolymers marketed as Nexar polymers and led to the discovery of a new grade line of products known today as Kraton A polymers.

The first innovation, Nexar polymers, provides a route to membranes having high water transport rates, excellent wet strength, and good selectivity. This important discovery was made through the efforts of a Virginia Tech graduate and Kraton employee, Dr. Brian Mather, and Dr. Willis, through the opportunity afforded to Dr. Mather by Kraton Polymers. Dr. Mather is named as a co-inventor with Dr. Willis on the patent describing these novel polymeric materials; US Patent 7,737,224.

The second innovation, Kraton A Polymer technology, was based upon a key discovery made while Dr. David Williamson, another Virginia Tech graduate and Kraton employee, who was working in the laboratory of Dr. Willis at Kraton Polymers. Dr. Willis and Dr. Williamson are listed as co-inventors on US Patent 6,699,941 B1, which provides additional details regarding this novel and important technology.

Currently, Prof. Long and Dr. Willis are working with a Virginia Tech post-doctoral fellow on the synthesis of a new family of polymers, which are being screened for performance in electrically driven separation processes and related applications. This highly effective partnership between Prof. Long, his students, and Dr. Willis continues today. Their collaborative research is focused on unprecedented synthetic strategies that are expected to lead to novel families of polyelectrolyte block copolymers. These efforts are envisioned to provide a route to membranes that transport anions at high rates, have good wet strength, and effectively reject the transport of cations.