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Plastics have profoundly changed what is possible in modern society. But between their reliance on fossil fuels and their massive accumulation as waste, plastics are also at the heart of a dual environmental crisis.
An article in Nature Communications reports the construction of a material with switchable rigidity and surface lubrication that is inspired by the ability of catfish to evade capture by predators.
An article in Advanced Materials reports an environmentally friendly hybrid mineral that presents the same flexibility and moldability as traditional plastics.
Chemistry plays a determining role in every stage of the plastic life cycle. We reflect on the challenges and limitations of plastics — their sheer abundance, chemodiversity and imperfect recoverability leading to loss of material — and on the need for chemical and non-chemical approaches to overcome them.
An article in the Journal of the American Chemical Society reports a method to exploit the stereochemical differences between two sugar-based monomers to fabricate a family of plastic-like materials with a range of degradation and mechanical properties.
The 2021 Materials Research Society (MRS) Fall Meeting was a hybrid event for the first time, featuring both an in-person meeting in Boston and a virtual meeting held separately. Nature Reviews Materials speaks to Gopal Rao, Chief Editor of Technical Content for MRS and Editor of MRS Bulletin, to find out what pandemic-era conference planning is like.
The Materials Research Society (MRS) fall meeting is a fixture in the conference calendar of the global materials science community. This year, for the very first time, the conference went hybrid, posing new opportunities, but also challenges, for organizers, speakers and attendees.
