What do your car, phone, soda bottle and shoes have in common? They're all largely made from petroleum. This nonrenewable resource gets processed into a versatile set of chemicals called polymers – or more commonly, plastics. ...
Environment
Nov 29, 2018
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15
Scientists are getting closer to designing thermoelectric materials that efficiently harvest heat from the surrounding environment and convert it into electricity to power various devices and appliances, according to a review ...
Engineering
Nov 21, 2018
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3
Car seats, mattresses and insulation materials are often made of polyurethane foams. The foaming process of the liquid polymer emulsions is complex. Fraunhofer researchers are now able to simulate the foaming behavior and ...
Polymers
Nov 2, 2018
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6
The cost of making plastics, paints, coatings for cell phone screens and other materials that heal themselves like skin could be dramatically reduced thanks to a breakthrough that a Clemson University team detailed in the ...
Polymers
Oct 11, 2018
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551
Biological materials from bone to spider-silk and wood are lightweight fibre composites arranged in a complex hierarchical structure, formed by directed self-assembly to demonstrate outstanding mechanical properties.
The inability to alter intrinsic piezoelectric behavior in organic polymers hampers their application in flexible, wearable and biocompatible devices, according to researchers at Penn State and North Carolina State University, ...
Condensed Matter
Oct 4, 2018
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63
A manufacturing technique that could help the semiconductor industry make more powerful computer chips began in the humblest of places—at a lunch table at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory.
Materials Science
Oct 4, 2018
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6
Synthetic plastics have made many aspect of modern life cheaper, safer and more convenient. However, we have failed to figure out how to get rid of them after we use them.
Environment
Aug 15, 2018
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10
MIT researchers have designed a polymer material that can change its structure in response to light, converting from a rigid substance to a softer one that can heal itself when damaged.
Polymers
Jul 18, 2018
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150
The polymers that make up synthetic materials need time to de-stress after processing, researchers said. A new study has found that entangled, long-chain polymers in solutions relax at two different rates, marking an advancement ...
Condensed Matter
Jul 2, 2018
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15
