For the health of the planet and our own bodies, plastics of the future ideally should not be made of plastics at all but should still be able to function like plastics. One particularly important job that plastics perform ...
Materials Science
Dec 18, 2019
0
91
Trillions of plastic fragments are afloat at sea, which cause large "garbage patches" to form in rotating ocean currents called subtropical gyres. As a result, impacts on ocean life are increasing and affecting organisms ...
Environment
Nov 7, 2019
1
864
Plastic waste is a growing problem around the world, despite efforts to recycle or reduce plastic use. In order to really transform the recycling process, more attention needs to be paid to the composition of plastic, according ...
Ecology
Oct 15, 2019
0
15
A polymer that self-destructs? While once a fictional idea, new polymers now exist that are rugged enough to ferry packages or sensors into hostile territory and vaporize immediately upon a military mission's completion. ...
Materials Science
Aug 26, 2019
4
821
On a molecular scale, there are surprising similarities between the outer shell of a golf ball and the white oil paint used by Van Gogh and his contemporaries. In both cases, the interactions between zinc ions and polymer ...
Polymers
Jun 24, 2019
0
0
Polypropylene (PP) is everywhere, being one of the most widely used plastics in human life. A versatile material, its naturally inert surface can be modified for specific applications. Researchers at Osaka University have ...
Polymers
Jun 11, 2019
0
5
Recyclable plastics that contain ring-shaped polymers may be a key to developing sustainable synthetic materials. Despite some promising advances, researchers said, a full understanding of how to processes ring polymers into ...
Polymers
May 17, 2019
0
149
A team of researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has devised a way to make a type of recyclable thermoset plastic. In their paper published in the journal Nature Chemistry, the group describes combining two ...
Consider the humble tire. Sitting outside on a frigid winter day, it's hard as a stone, yet when spinning under a drag racer, a tire becomes warmly pliable. For everyday materials, from glass to rubber to plastic, these fundamental ...
Polymers
Mar 11, 2019
0
90
Scientists at the University of Liverpool have discovered a new process to make polymers out of sulfur which could provide a way of making plastic that is less harmful to the environment.
Materials Science
Feb 7, 2019
0
145
