Plastic trash lining a mountain trail might not seem like the start of a chemistry breakthrough, but for Yuwei Gu, it was.

Not all polymers are plastics, but all plastics are polymers. And organic (carbon-based) polymer plastics, known mostly for being insulators, in some cases make excellent conductors and semiconductors ...

With conventional waste management systems falling short, many scientists are turning to nature for innovative solutions to the issue of plastic waste. One promising avenue is microbial degradation: ...

Getting rid of plastic waste remains a Sisyphean task despite our efforts to tackle it by employing PET-eating bacteria and turning it into footwear, liquid fuel, and even the foundations for an ...

Yuwei Gu conceived this idea while hiking on a park trail and noticing plastic bottles littered around.

A polymer is a chemical compound that contains a large number of identical molecular repeating units. A plastic material is a polymer, typically modified with additives, which can be molded or shaped ...

Hundreds of millions of tons of single-use plastic end up in landfills every year, and even the small percentage of plastic that gets recycled can’t last forever. But our group of materials scientists ...

In what could form the basis of petroleum-free plastics that are both entirely recyclable and biodegradable, chemists have found a polymer that can be synthesized into useful materials and then broken ...

We're surrounded by plastics and other synthetic chemicals. Are you aware of these less obvious sources?

IR spectroscopy or infrared spectroscopy is used for identifying a group of chemical species in a wide range of sample materials. This technique is mainly utilized for classifying organic chemical ...