New robust polymers that are chemically recyclable. Introducing a directing group enables catalytic cleavage of strong chemical bonds, allowing controlled degradation of robust polymers into monomers.

Polymer capsules can store functional substances such as drugs and fragrances, making them widely used in functional cosmetics and daily necessities. However, conventional capsules use non-degradable ...

The chemical industry has a long tradition of producing polymers. This involves turning small molecular building blocks into long chains of molecules that bond together. Polymers are the basis of all ...

Very few plastics can be recycled without a loss in performance or aesthetics because of the various additives, like dyes, fillers or flame retardants, in them. However, a team of researchers at the U ...

With millions of tons of plastic going into landfills every year, chemists are racing to find end-of-life uses for materials like polystyrene. But these large polymers are notoriously hard to dissolve ...

A bucket of liquid plastic that never hardens sounds like a fantasy in a factory. It is also the kind of problem that drives ...

Light as plastic, stronger than steel, and more difficult to deform than bulletproof glass. “We don’t usually think of plastics as being something that you could use to support a building,” says MIT ...

2D polymers are a novel class of nanomaterials that combine the structural features of polymers with the two-dimensional geometry of graphene and other 2D materials. These polymers consist of ...

Researchers have succeeded in breaking down plastic into its molecular building blocks and in recovering over 90 percent of them -- a first step towards genuine plastic recycling. A team of ETH ...