Two features distinguish Coates’ work, he said: making plastics that degrade into compounds easily absorbed by the environment, and making plastics from renewable resources such as corn.
Ideally, his polymer compounds incorporate both features, said Coates, an assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Cornell University.
Plastics based on lactic acid are one such example. “Lactic acid comes from the fermentation of starch, which comes from corn,” he said. “And you might not like lactic acid much when you’re jogging (with muscle ‘burn’) but it’s non-toxic and bacteria convert it back into carbon dioxide.”
Polylactic acids could become more mundane products, such as beverage containers, or specialized ones, such as sutures to stitch wounds and incisions. Their characteristics might even make them good carriers to deliver drugs within the body, Coates added.
He and his research team have found the key to different applications within lactic acid itself. Like many biomolecules, it comes in two versions whose structures are identical but are mirror images of each other. Varying the sequence of these mirror images along the polymer chain makes the plastic either hard and crystalline, fairly pliable or somewhere in between.
Chemistry has been a part of Coates’ life as long as he can remember. “My dad was a chemist and a great role model,” he explained. “He used to bring home demos and occasionally take me into work with him. So I’ve always liked chemistry.”
Coates received his undergraduate degree from Wabash College in 1989 and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1994. He is a member of the ACS divisions of organic, inorganic and polymer chemistry, and of the division of polymeric materials: science and engineering.
The ACS Board of Directors established the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award in 1984 to recognize excellence in organic chemistry. Under the prominent MIT chemist’s will, each of 10 such awards consists of a $5,000 prize and $40,000 research grant.