As polymers become more complex, traditional separation techniques used to analyze the material’s composition are no longer adequate for today’s research and development demands. But a Massachusetts lab instrument business owner, who helped build a refractometer 50 years ago, and Dow Chemical Company have teamed up to develop a system that they say can provide [...]
Use of Dissolvable Arterial Stents Growing
March 25, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Dissolvable arterial stents laced with polymers to prevent blood clotting seem to be catching on throughout the world. Just not here. Yet. Global pharma company Abbott has released its “Bioresorbable Vascular Scaffold” in India and in Europe. Meanwhile, Japan’s Terumo Corporation is tauting its dissolving arterial stent as just as good as Abbott’s. However, the [...]
Polymer Coating Improves Cancer Drug Therapy
March 21, 2013 By Leave a Comment
A University of South Carolina scientist has developed a polymer coating that helps powerful cancer drugs target and kill tumors like a military smart bomb. The polymer coating developed by Peisheng Xu, a researcher in the South Carolina College of Pharmacy, provides two advantages. It encapsulates the drug, and it helps the drug locate the tumor, [...]
Graphene Adds Properties to Materials
March 15, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Graphene is sort of a wonder material that gives new or enhanced properties to metals, polymers, and ceramics. Researchers have been figuring out ways to add graphene to these materials to create new applications for sports equipment, medical implants, and engineering materials in fields such as aerospace. Graphene is a sheet of pure carbon, one-atom-thick [...]
Polymer Rids Surfaces of Biofilm
February 12, 2013 By Leave a Comment
When a fly lands on your nose, you wrinkle your skin and shake your head to get the bug to go away. Duke University engineers are using the same principle — albeit on a microscopic scale — to prevent bacteria that later ushers in other, larger life from building up on ship’s hulls. They believe [...]
Polymer Units Respond to Sunlight
February 8, 2013 By Leave a Comment
We all know how plants turn to face the light. But what about polymers? A team from MIT has incorporated photoreactive groups of atoms into polymers that make them respond to ultraviolet (UV) light or sunlight. The materials that can be made from the innovation could grow or move toward a light source with the [...]
Top 25 Innovations Made With Polymers, Part 2
January 31, 2013 By Leave a Comment
To commemorate Polymer Solutions Incorporated’s 25 years in business, we’ve collected the top 25 innovations using polymers and plastics that are making the world a better — and cooler — place. The first 13 appeared in a post on Jan. 29. Here is the last batch of 12. Are there other innovations that you’d like [...]
Scientists Learn How to Manipulate Polymers
January 8, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Polymers as puppets. That’s why scientists in Spain are doing with polymers, manipulating blends of them to do mankind’s bidding, like a puppet on a string. Chemists at the University of the Basque Country are expanding on what scientists already know — using combinations of polymers to produce new materials — manipulating their environment to [...]
Polymers More Easily Unhinge Molecules
December 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment
It seems molecules don’t have to open or have their component parts break away just through chemical reactions. Scientists are now finding that they can unlock molecules’ binding properties through mechanical force more easily with polymers. Traditionally, chemists have focused on how so-called mechanophores in molecules react when they are under stress and strain from [...]
MPC Polymer Has Come a Long Way
December 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Because of advances in scientific techniques, the polymer, 2-methacryloyloxyethyl phosphorylcholine (MPC), has many biological and medical applications, according to Japanese scientists. Developments in synthesis techniques have given the polymer invaluable potential as a biomaterial, says Yasuhiko Iwasaki at KansaiUniversity and Kazuhiko Ishihara at the University of Tokyo. The polymer can act like a cell membrane, [...]
