Creating a new, sustainable plastic using physics
19 ม.ค. 67
For the past three years, Ph.D. candidate Sophie van Lange has been dedicated to one clear goal: producing plastic that is both hard and sustainable. The plastics we use today are either recyclable or strong and hard—not both. Van Lange stepped away from traditional chemical approaches to produce plastic and developed a completely new method to create durable and reusable plastic in a completely new way. The trick? Physical forces. The process begins with a seemingly simple setup: a yellow powder in one dish and a white powder in another. By dissolving and combining these two solutions, and subjecting them to heat and pressure in a hot press, Van Lange transforms these substances into a rectangular piece of plastic measuring two by half a centimeter within two weeks. Under normal conditions, the resulting plastic is sturdy and hard but becomes reformable when heated. She refers to these innovative plastics as "compleximers." Van Lange and her colleagues report on this in Science Advances. ....
