Institut Charles Sadron (ICS), 23 rue du Loess, BP 84047, 67034 Strasbourg Cédex 2, France
Équipe "Théorie et Simulation des Polymères" (ETSP)
Welcome, Research, Publications, Group, Seminars, Workshops, Lectures, Glossary, Whereabouts, Links

A short History of Polymer Science

9. Challenges: Tomorrow's Giants

Polymer products are the ubiquitous legacy of our age. Other centuries built structures from stone, wood, or steel. Today we engineer the structures of matter itself. We have become molecular architects.

Where, then, will tomorrow's molecular giants be? Most polymer engineers feel the days of a market dominated by a few polymers are numbered.

Composite Material

Many see the promise of the future in speciality polymers, which will be fashioned with complex sets of properties designed for specific needs but produced in relatively low volumes. Reinforcing polymer resins with graphite, boron, and super-strong aramid fibers has already led to advanced composite materials that form the bodies of many of the latest spacecraft.

Other composites are finding uses much more down to earth--on the road, in fact. While Henry Ford experimented with polymer auto parts from soya beans in the 1940s and Corvettes have long excited drivers with their lean polyester and glass-fiber bodies, the 1980s have witnessed the birth of the first mass-market car with an all composite body. Reinforced plastics are economically competitive with metals in a business that must produce multiple makes of cars in a single year. Sheet-molded polyester and injection-molded polyurethanes reduce auto weight, increase fuel efficiency, and resist corrosion and dents. Few parts of a car are incapable of being replaced by composites.

Conductive Polymers

The phenomenal growth of electronics and computers in recent years has catalyzed research into the creation of conductive polymers. Conductive polymers are promising because they are much lighter than metals and can potentially be used to make lightweight batteries for electric cars, for example. Polymer plastics can be made electrically conductive through the addition of carbon or metal flakes. New research is aimed at making polymers intrinsically conductive by adding chemicals like iodine and sulfur trifluoride to the polymer chain. These altered polypyrroles, polyacetylenes, and polyquinolines are too susceptible to decay to be marketable yet. Still, these modified polymers and molded plastics have promising futures as static dissipators in microcircuitry and as plastic batteries.

Biopolymers

Biopolymers were the first polymers people ever used, and after a century of developing polymers for use as materials, polymer science is turning back toward its roots, as polymers show promise in a wide range of biomedical uses. In the three decades since the discovery of the most complex nucleic acid structures, biochemists and molecular biologists have spliced genetic material, synthesized hormones, and created new strains of life. Polymer plastics and tissues work well together now, but synthetic biopolymers will far outshine today's techniques. Artificial skin and bone, drug delivery devices, and scaffolds for growing transplant organs are just some of the uses for polymers that are being studied by medical science at the present.

New research and production lines

Production technologies of the future will combine tradition with innovation. Demand for composites in the auto industry has already led to a boom in the century-old process of compression molding. Scientists are utilizing new methods for combining previously incompatible ingredients, creating alloys and blends which often have properties better than any of their components. Commercialization is imminent for a new type of polymer factory --inside the body of a living microbe. And astronauts have already formed the first polystyrene beads in space.

Polymer based products are woven into every aspect of our age. Their story has been very much the story of the making of the modern world. Solving today's challenges in polymer science and engineering will no doubt shape the future.

Bridging the length scales: Computational investigaton of polymers

Webmaster: J.P. Wittmer, Last Update: 15/MAI/2012