W. N. Lacey Lectureship in Chemical Engineering
We simultaneously associate plastics with both waste in the form of massive landfill requirements and a tendency to escape into sensitive ecosystems and also as a potential solution to energy and climate crises in the form of cheap, lightweight, safe batteries and other energy devices. In both cases, however, one attribute of polymers is simultaneously its greatest flaw and a tremendous opportunity in terms of improved performance: processibility. The inability to recycle plastics is at least in part rooted in the array of chemically dissimilar commodity plastics on the market and our inability to recycle such a mixed stream. In this talk, I will demonstrate the tremendous utility of electrostatic interactions in reducing the potential environmental impacts of plastics. For example, we have recently demonstrated that incorporating even a single charged group per polymer chain causes highly immiscible polymers to form homogeneous blends with high mechanical strength. Similar electrostatic attractions are so strong as to force conjugated (conducting polymers) to form high solids loading solutions that have shown great utility as battery binders.