Polymer Editing Upcycles Waste Into Higher-Performance Plastics
To upcycle the polymers of discarded plastics, chemists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory invented a way to generate new macromolecules with more valuable properties than those of the starting material. Credit: Adam Malin/ORNL, U.S. Department of Energy
By editing the polymers of discarded plastics, chemists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have found a way to generate new macromolecules with more valuable properties than those of the starting material.