Christoph Weder
Executive Director
Chair, Polymer Chemistry and Materials
CONTACT
Adolphe Merkle Institute
University of Fribourg
Rte de l'Ancienne Papeterie
PO Box 209
1723 Marly 1
Switzerland
Email: christoph.weder@unifr.ch
Phone: +41 26 300 94 65
Fax: +41 26 300 96 24
EDUCATION
1990 Diploma in Chemistry, ETH Zürich (Prof. U.W. Suter)
1992 Education as Chemistry Teacher, Institute for Behavioural Sciences, ETH Zürich
1994 Dr. sc. nat., Dept. of Materials, ETH Zürich (w. Prof. U.W. Suter)
2000 Habilitation, Photofunctional Polymers, Department of Materials, ETH Zürich
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Our main scientific interests revolve around the design and investigation of novel functional polymers, which exhibit currently unavailable properties and enable new applications. In particular the ability to design the chemical structure of macromolecular systems virtually at will, but also the possibility to exert control over their supramolecular architecture allows one to change the properties of this broad class of materials over a wide range. For the efficient development of new polymers it is of fundamental importance to develop a predictive understanding for the relation between the relevant molecular parameters and the macroscopic property of interest. Our interests and activities are therefore highly interdisciplinary and range from the synthesis of new monomers and polymers to advanced polymer processing, to the in-depth investigation and (in some cases) technological exploitation of these materials. Architectural control at the nanometer length scale is an important design tool for many of our projects. The use of non-covalent interactions has emerged as another important aspect. We employ various (macro)molecular assembly processes as polymerization tools, but are similarly interested to exploit specific intermolecular interactions for the formation of targeted supramolecular architectures. Many of my current and planned future research activities are interdisciplinary and span across several disciplines. Our local, national, and international collaborations include partners whose expertise ranges from solid-state physics to biomedical engineering and medicine. Examples of completed projects that illustrate some of our past activities include the development and investigation of nonlinear optic, photo- and electroluminescent polymers.
