Polymer

There are loads of precious and fragile electronics in our lives that require appropriate protection when used on-the-go, and therefore the range of gadget-tailored bags is pretty huge. If you need greater protection than a typical case provides, however, a hard shell-equipped backpack may be your best bet. Designed for heavy use, the Solid Gray backpack comes with a rigid body yet is lightweight at the same time, given that it's made from a single sheet of copolymer. Read More

Nobody likes scratches in their car's finish. That's part of the reason why over the years, a number of research facilities have tried to develop self-healing paint. These efforts have resulted in products containing things such as microcapsules that burst open when scratched, elastic resins, and even a chemical derived from the exoskeletons of crustaceans. Now, scientists from the U.S. and Switzerland have developed polymers – which could be used in paint – that heal their own scratches when exposed to ultraviolet light. Read More

If someone does a lot of arm curls at the gym, the typical result is that the bones and muscles in their arms will get stronger. Recently, researchers at Houston’s Rice University inadvertently created a nanocomposite that behaves in the same way. Although the material doesn’t respond to static stress, repeated mechanical stress will cause it to become stiffer. Read More

When the caoutchouc tree is damaged, liquid latex containing capsules of the protein hevein escapes from inside of it. Those capsules rupture, releasing the hevein, which links the latex particles together and ultimately closes up the wound. The whole bursting/sealing-microcapsules thing is obviously a pretty good idea, as it has been put to use in human technology such as self-healing concrete, electronics, paint and aircraft epoxy resin. Now, German researchers have copied the caoutchouc tree’s modus operandi to create a self-sealing elastic polymer. Read More

Mussels are remarkable creatures, not only in how good they taste steamed and buttered, but also in their ability to cling to rocks that are pounded by ocean waves. Their tenacious grip comes courtesy of byssal holdfast fibers that are secreted by the mussels themselves. Last year, scientists from Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces analyzed these fibers in an effort to determine how they were able to maintain their brute strength, while also giving slightly to avoid snapping. This week, scientists from the University of Chicago announced that they have been able to replicate the fibers, producing an adhesive that could be used on underwater machinery, as a surgical adhesive, or as a bonding agent for implants. Read More

Scientists from the University of Amsterdam have developed a process for making fully biodegradable, non-toxic and non-hazardous thermoset resins from readily available, low-cost plant materials. This new range of plastics could be used for panels such as MDF in the construction industry and replace polyurethane and polystyrene packaging ... all without increasing cost or production times. Read More

Materials that can repair themselves are generally a good thing, as they increase the lifespan of products created from them, and reduce the need for maintenance. Biorenewable polymers are also pretty likable, as they reduce or even eliminate the need for petroleum products in plastic production, replacing them with plant-derived substances. Michael Kessler, an Iowa State University associate professor of materials science and engineering, and an associate of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory, is now attempting to combine the two. Read More

Scientists tasked with creating better plastic films have been at a loss when it comes to observing how synthetic polymers react under mechanical stress – the polymers are just too small for a microscope to keep track of while being stretched. Now a team of physicists from Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) has come up with a solution. They’re using a muscle filament protein to build polymer networks that can be observed by a microscope, and by doing so have already determined why some polymers get tougher with repeated stress, while others get softer. Read More

While rooftops are the obvious place to put solar cells to generate clean electricity for the home, we’ve seen a number of technologies aimed at expanding the potential solar collecting area to include windows using transparent solar cells. These include Octillion Corp’s NanoPower Window technology, RSi’s semi-transparent photovoltaic glass windows, and EnSol’s transparent thin film. In this latest development, U.S. scientists have fabricated a new type of self-assembling transparent thin film material that could boost the cost effectiveness and scalability of solar window production. Read More