Hi Tech & Innovation
Slipping and sliding on snowy or icy roads is dangerous. Salt and sand help melt ice or provide traction, but excessive use is bad for the environment. And sometimes, a surprise storm can blow through before these materials ...
Feb 16, 2023
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Energy & Green Tech
Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries power phones, laptops, other personal electronics and electric cars, and are even used to store energy generated by solar panels. But if the temperature of these batteries rises too high, ...
Dec 7, 2022
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68
Robotics
An international team led by researchers at the RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research (CPR) has engineered a system for creating remote controlled cyborg cockroaches, equipped with a tiny wireless control module that is powered ...
Sep 5, 2022
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Engineering
Engineers have designed and successfully tested a more efficient wind sensor for use on drones, balloons and other autonomous aircraft.
Aug 8, 2022
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154
Engineering
A breakthrough from Deakin University researchers could help address a major obstacle in the development of environmentally-friendly, cost effective, polymer-based batteries.
Aug 3, 2022
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126
Electronics & Semiconductors
For decades, field-effect transistors enabled by silicon-based semiconductors have powered the electronics revolution. But in recent years, manufacturers have come up against hard physical limits to further size reductions ...
Jun 23, 2022
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262
Engineering
Borrowing a technique from inkjet printers, researchers at Princeton Engineering have rolled out a pixel-by-pixel method to program and manufacture soft structures for use in robotics, biomedical devices or architectural ...
May 24, 2022
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113
Energy & Green Tech
Research led by the University of Strathclyde suggests that solar energy can be accessed and converted into hydrogen—a clean and renewable fuel.
May 5, 2022
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117
Electronics & Semiconductors
Solar cells will doubtless play a significant part in a sustainable energy future. Polymer solar cells (PSCs) specifically provide an excellent option because they are cheap to produce and can be both flexible and semitransparent. ...
Apr 21, 2022
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1073
Engineering
No one would ever imagine crumpling up their smartphone, television or another electronic device. Today's displays—which are flat, rigid and fragile—lack the ability to reshape to interactively respond to users.
Mar 23, 2022
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108
A polymer (from Greek πολύ-ς /po΄li-s/ much, many and μέρος /΄meros/ part) is a large molecule (macromolecule) composed of repeating structural units typically connected by covalent chemical bonds. While polymer in popular usage suggests plastic, the term actually refers to a large class of natural and synthetic materials with a variety of properties.
Due to the extraordinary range of properties accessible in polymeric materials , they have come to play an essential and ubiquitous role in everyday life - from plastics and elastomers on the one hand to natural biopolymers such as DNA and proteins that are essential for life on the other. A simple example is polyethylene, whose repeating unit is based on ethylene (IUPAC name ethene) monomer. Most commonly, as in this example, the continuously linked backbone of a polymer consists mainly of carbon atoms. However, other structures do exist; for example, elements such as silicon form familiar materials such as silicones, examples being silly putty and waterproof plumbing sealant. The backbone of DNA is in fact based on a phosphodiester bond, and repeating units of polysaccharides (e.g. cellulose) are joined together by glycosidic bonds via oxygen atoms.
Natural polymeric materials such as shellac, amber, and natural rubber have been in use for centuries. Biopolymers such as proteins and nucleic acids play crucial roles in biological processes. A variety of other natural polymers exist, such as cellulose, which is the main constituent of wood and paper.
The list of synthetic polymers includes synthetic rubber, Bakelite, neoprene, nylon, PVC, polystyrene, polyacrylonitrile, PVB, silicone, and many more.
Polymers are studied in the fields of polymer chemistry, polymer physics, and polymer science.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
