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Dr. Kayleigh McEwan

Biography

Kayleigh attended the University of Sheffield where in 2008 she attained an MSci in Chemistry, which included a year industrial placement at Infineum International Ltd, Oxfordshire (2006-2007). Her Masters project was undertaken with the supervision of Professor G. Leggett on photocleavable monolayers.

After working briefly with polymers at Infineum Kayleigh went on to do a PhD in polymer Chemistry at the University of Warwick, under the supervision of Professor D. M. Haddleton, with industrial funding and technical support from Agilent Technologies (formerly Polymer Labs).

Kayleigh’s 4 year ChemDoc project focused on the synthesis and characterisation of branched polymers via catalytic chain transfer polymerisation (CCTP) and their functionalisation using thiol-Michael addition and epoxide ring-opening chemistries.

On the completion of her PhD, Kayleigh took on a job as a contract synthetic chemist, GPC analyst and facilities manager at the University of Warwick, working with Professor Haddleton and Agilent Technologies.


Research interests

My PhD, entitled "Branching out with CCTP; the synthesis of branched functional polymers", focused on the formation of branched polymers by CCTP, the main advantage of which was the retention of high levels of vinyl groups in the products, which provided a reactive handle for the functionalisation of these materials by click chemistry, mainly thiol-Michael addition.

Synthesis of branched functional polymers using a combination of CCTP and thiol-Michael addition

This work later encompassed epoxide containing monomers in the creation of dual functional branched polymers in a commercially available fashion.

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My research interests are broadening in light of my new role at Warwick and mainly focus on industrial synthesis and analysis of industrial samples by GPC/SEC. I also perform advanced GPC/SEC analysis on a variety of polymers and proteins for Agilent application notes, which I coauthor.

Keywords:

CCTP, branched polymers, star polymers, functional polymers, click chemistry, epoxide chemistry, GPC analysis, application notes


Selected publications

Vol 3. Chapter 10 Cobalt catalysed chain transfer polymerisation, Slavin, S.; McEwan, K. A.; Haddleton, D. M.,

 Comprehensive Polymer Science 2e, Elsevier Science 2011

Dual-functional materials via CCTP and selective orthogonal thiol-Michael addition/epoxide ring opening reactions

Kayleigh A. McEwan , Stacy Slavin , Edward Tunnah and David M. Haddleton, Polym. Chem., 2013, Advance Article

Absolut “copper catalyzation perfected”; robust living polymerization of NIPAM: Guinness is good for SET-LRP

Christopher Waldron, Qiang Zhang, Zaidong Li, Vasiliki Nikolaou, Gabit Nurumbetov, Jamie Godfrey, Ronan McHale, Gokhan Yilmaz, Rajan K. Randev, Mony Girault, Kayleigh McEwan, David M. Haddleton, Martijn Droesbeke, Alice J. Haddleton, Paul Wilson, Alexandre Simula, Jennifer Collins, Danielle J. Lloyd, James A. Burns, Christopher Summers, Claudia Houben, Athina Anastasaki, Muxiu Li, C. Remzi Becer, Jenny K. Kiviaho and Nuttapol Risangud

Polym. Chem., 2014, Advance Article

 

 

 

Email: Kayleigh.McEwan@warwick.ac.uk

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Office phone number:
+44 24 765 26340

M.Sc. in Chemistry:
The University of Sheffield
PhD in Chemistry:
The University of Warwick

Mailing address:
Department of Chemistry, University of Warwick
Library Road, CV4 7AL
Coventry, UK
 


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