A polymer is a chemical compound that contains a large number of identical molecular repeating units. A plastic material is a polymer, typically modified with additives, which can be molded or shaped ...

Plastic is an indispensable part of everyday life. Bottles, bags, packaging and technical molded parts made of plastic are lightweight and resistant to water and decay. While such qualities are highly ...

Little pieces of polymer plastic. The plastics industry is trying to be as clean as possible, but it has a lot of obstacles to overcome. The late great comedian George Carlin once said that perhaps ...

Hundreds of millions of tons of single-use plastic ends up in landfills every year, and even the small percentage of plastic that gets recycled can’t last forever. But our group of materials ...

ORNL's invention may change plastic's environmental fate by rearranging polymeric building blocks to customize the properties of plastics. Molecular subunits link to produce polymer chains that can ...

From its early beginnings during and after World War II, the commercial industry for polymers – long chain synthetic molecules of which “plastics” are a common misnomer – has grown rapidly. In 2015, ...

Sibele Cestari works for Queen's University of Belfast. She receives funding from Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The disposal of plastics is a global problem. They are ...

Researchers at Georgia Tech have developed "living" polymers capable of growing, shrinking, healing, and regenerating after ...

Hundreds of millions of tons of single-use plastic end up in landfills every year, and even the small percentage of plastic that gets recycled can’t last forever. But our group of materials scientists ...