A team from the Kalow and Kulik labs report the use of bifunctional aromatic thioesters as dynamic covalent cross-links in hydrogels, demonstrating that at physiologic pH in aqueous conditions, transthioesterification facilitates stress relaxation on the time scale of hundreds of seconds. This system exemplifies how dynamic cross-links that exchange through an associative mechanism enable tunable stress relaxation without altering stiffness. Article Link

A team from the Gong and Craig labs embedded cyclobutane-based mechanophore crosslinkers in the first network of double network hydrogels and achieved efficient activation with 100% selectivity.  These findings provide crucial design principles for achieving selective mechanophore activation and deepen our understanding of the damage mechanism within polymer networks when utilizing mechanophores as detectors. Article Link

A team from the Campos, Nelson, and Rubinstein labs report the use of carbazole-based thiuram disulfides (CTDs) that offer dual reactivity as photoactivated reshuffling linkages and iniferters under visible light irradiation. The fast response to visible light activation of the CTDs leads to temporal control of shape manipulation, healing, and chain extension in the polymer networks, despite the lack of optical transparency. Article Link

A team from the Moore, Craig, and Kulik labs detail a non-scissile mechanophore built from an 8-thiabicyclo[3.2.1]octane 8,8-dioxide (TBO) motif that releases one equivalent of sulfur dioxide (SO2) from each repeat unit. These comprehensive studies of TBO mechanophore provide a mechanically coupled mechanism of multi-SO2 release from one polymer chain, facilitating the translation of polymer mechanochemistry to potential biomedical applications. Article Link

A team from the Klausen, Craig, and Kulik labs report the synthesis of two new examples of 7- and 8-membered sila-cycloalkynes, as well as an investigation of their strain-promoted reactivity with azides. The results demonstrate that measurable angle-strain alone is insufficient for room-temperature cycloaddition, influencing design principles in an area broadly relevant to organic chemists and chemical biologists. Article Link

In this article, researchers from the Klausen, Kulik, Moore, Kalow, Sottos, and Johnson labs highlight the use of a comonomer strategy for silyl ether exchange yielding deconstruction and bulk remolding in pDCPD thermosets. Article Link

In this Perspective, researchers from the Sottos and Craig labs speculate as to the potential match between covalent polymer mechanochemistry and recent advances in polymer network chemistry, specifically, topologically controlled networks and the hierarchical material responses enabled by multi-network architectures and mechanically interlocked polymers. Article Link

The Sottos, Johnson, and Moore labs demonstrate end-of-life deconstruction and upcycling of high-performance poly(dicyclopentadiene) (pDCPD) thermosets with a concurrent reduction in the energy demand for curing via frontal copolymerization. Article Link

A multi-institutional team from the Olsen, Moore, Nelson, Craig, and Kalow labs advance BigSMILES to accommodate a broad variety of non-covalent chemistry with a simple user-oriented, semi-flexible annotation formalism. Article Link

MONET Senior Investigators Jeremiah Johnson and Heather Kulik in collaboration with MONET postdoc Ilia Kevlishvili, MONET alum Nathan Oldenhuis, and others introduce a modular heterogenous catalysis platform in this latest publication in JACS. Article Link

Michael Rubinstein and collaborators at Duke, University of Hokkaido, and the Russian Academy of Sciences have developed a scaling theory of the elasticity of swollen and deswollen polymer networks. Article Link

Nicole Steinmetz and a team at University of California, San Diego formulated cowpea mosaic virus (CPMV) nanoparticles in injectable hydrogels to achieve slow particle release and prolonged immunostimulation, eliciting an antibody response that was sustained over 20 weeks in mouse models. Article Link