Polymer chemistry articles within Nature

Featured

  • Article |

    Three-dimensional photo-printable resin chemistry yields an elastomer with tensile strength of 94.6  MPa and toughness of 310.4  MJ  m−3, both of which far exceed that of any three-dimensional printed elastomer.

    • Zizheng Fang
    • , Hongfeng Mu
    •  & Tao Xie

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The operando imaging of the early formation stages of covalent organic frameworks with the optical technique interferometric scattering microscopy leads to mechanistic insights, enabling the rational development of a synthesis protocol at room temperature instead of elevated temperatures.

    • Christoph G. Gruber
    • , Laura Frey
    •  & Emiliano Cortés

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A photopolymer platform derived from renewable lipoates can be 3D-printed into high-resolution parts, which possess properties comparable to some commercial acrylic resins, and then recycled to produce a re-printable resin.

    • Thiago O. Machado
    • , Connor J. Stubbs
    •  & Andrew P. Dove

  • Perspective |

    Four future greenhouse gas emission scenarios for the global plastics system are investigated, with the lead scenario achieving net-zero emissions, and a series of  technical, legal and economic interventions recommended.

    • Fernando Vidal
    • , Eva R. van der Marel
    •  & Charlotte K. Williams

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A straightforward strategy for preparing lignin-based wood adhesives from lignocellulosic biomass is described, with the resulting adhesives demonstrating performance attractive for plywood manufacture.

    • Guangxu Yang
    • , Zhenggang Gong
    •  & Li Shuai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors report a transition-metal-catalysed protocol for recovery of polymer building block bisphenol  A and intact fibres from epoxy composites, demonstrating that chemical recycling approaches for thermoset epoxy resins and composites are achievable.

    • Alexander Ahrens
    • , Andreas Bonde
    •  & Troels Skrydstrup

  • Article |

    A new compatibilization strategy installs dynamic crosslinkers into several classes of binary, ternary and postconsumer immiscible polymer mixtures in situ, with the resulting compatibilized dynamic thermosets exhibiting intrinsic reprocessability and enhanced tensile strength and creep resistance.

    • Ryan W. Clarke
    • , Tobias Sandmeier
    •  & Eugene Y.-X. Chen

  • Article |

    A depolymerization method is described that uses electrified spatiotemporal heating to selectively generate monomers from the commodity plastics polypropylene and poly(ethylene terephthalate), allowing control over the pyrolysis of plastic waste and reducing the formation of side products.

    • Qi Dong
    • , Aditya Dilip Lele
    •  & Liangbing Hu

  • Article |

    A reaction is described combining oxidative polymerization and in situ reductive n-doping to yield poly(benzodifurandione), a facilely synthesized stable n-type conducting polymer with ultrahigh conductivity, with applications in organic electronics.

    • Haoran Tang
    • , Yuanying Liang
    •  & Fei Huang

  • Article |

    Untreated, postconsumer-PET from 51 different thermoformed products can all be almost completely degraded by FAST-PETase in 1 week and PET can be resynthesized from the recovered monomers, demonstrating recycling at the industrial scale.

    • Hongyuan Lu
    • , Daniel J. Diaz
    •  & Hal S. Alper

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A protocol in which monomers are pre-organized using a reversible and removable urea linkage enables the production of covalent organic frameworks with higher crystallinity and porosity than those produced using standard approaches with randomly aligned monomers.

    • Weiwei Zhang
    • , Linjiang Chen
    •  & Andrew I. Cooper

  • Article |

    In situ scanning tunnelling microscopy reveals the dynamic nature of the early stages of two-dimensional (2D) polymer formation and crystallization at the solid–liquid interface.

    • Gaolei Zhan
    • , Zhen-Feng Cai
    •  & Steven De Feyter

  • Article |

    An environmentally friendly, all-organic radical battery is demonstrated, in which redox-active polypeptides perform as both cathode and anode materials, with a metal-free organic electrolyte.

    • Tan P. Nguyen
    • , Alexandra D. Easley
    •  & Karen L. Wooley

  • Article |

    A diversity-oriented synthesis approach that yields a library of architecturally broad microporous polymers is used to develop structurally diverse polymer membranes with ion specificity and to screen their properties.

    • Miranda J. Baran
    • , Mark E. Carrington
    •  & Brett A. Helms

  • Article |

    Polycarbonates and polyesters with materials properties like those of high-density polyethylene can be recycled chemically by depolymerization to their constituent monomers, re-polymerization yielding material with uncompromised processing and materials properties.

    • Manuel Häußler
    • , Marcel Eck
    •  & Stefan Mecking

  • Article |

    A method of endowing thermoset plastics with a degree of recyclability and reprocessability by incorporating cleavable chemical linkages in the strands of the polymer, rather than in the crosslinks, is presented.

    • Peyton Shieh
    • , Wenxu Zhang
    •  & Jeremiah A. Johnson

  • Letter |

    Photoredox transformations are achieved with infrared light by using triplet fusion upconversion that converts infrared into visible light, enabling the use of photoredox chemistry on larger scales and through barriers that are impenetrable by visible light.

    • Benjamin D. Ravetz
    • , Andrew B. Pun
    •  & Luis M. Campos

  • Letter |

    A polymer code based on a triplet of parameters—network strand length, side-chain length and grafting density—enables materials to be designed with specific combinations of mechanical properties to mimic biological materials.

    • Mohammad Vatankhah-Varnosfaderani
    • , William F. M. Daniel
    •  & Sergei S. Sheiko

  • Letter |

    The addition of boron nitride nanosheets to polymer nanocomposites creates dielectric materials that operate at much higher working temperatures than previous polymer dielectrics, as well as being flexible, lightweight, photopatternable, scalable and robust, which now makes them more attractive for electronic device applications than ceramic dielectrics.

    • Qi Li
    • , Lei Chen
    •  & Qing Wang

  • Letter |

    Measurements and simulations of several high-mobility conjugated polymers show that their charge transport properties reflect an almost complete lack of disorder in the polymers, despite their amorphous microstructures, resulting from the resilience of the planar polymer backbone conformations to side-chain disorder.

    • Deepak Venkateshvaran
    • , Mark Nikolka
    •  & Henning Sirringhaus

  • News & Views |

    Gold is not as inert as was believed — it can promote molecular synthesis. A study uses scanning tunnelling microscopy to catch gold in the act as it guides the formation of one-dimensional polymers from saturated hydrocarbons.

    • Robert J. Madix
    •  & Cynthia M. Friend

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