Polystyrene Upcycling: Turning styrofoam boxes into organic batteries

Pleased to see our latest Research Article on commodity polystyrene upcycling out in ChemSusChem! In this joint effort between my team and my long-time collaborators in Spain (the groups of Prof. David Mecerreyes and Prof. Haritz Sardon), we show that styrofoam food containers can be chemically upcycled into redox polymer electrode materials for metal-free organic batteries.

Article link: https://doi.org/10.1002/cssc.202500092

Polymer electrets for organic nonvolatile memory devices

Our joint review article with Prof. Cheng-Liang Liu (National Taiwan University) on polymer electrets is now out in Materials Today Chemistry. Polymer electrets are organic materials that are capable of trapping electronic charge; this property is key to their application in information storage. Find out how they work and learn about their chemistry! 

Share link: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1k5BA8nHhtOvC1

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mtchem.2024.102380

Turning waste polystyrene into antimicrobial materials

Our research work on transforming used Styrofoam food boxes into antimicrobial polymers is now out in ACS Applied Polymer Materials:

 

 
A big shout-out to the project team: Algin and Michelle for their synthetic skills and perseverance, Wenguang's prowess with instruments and characterization, Li Ning's biomedical expertise and figure-making artistry, and He-Kuan's practical creativity.

Read our article here.

Our article on Antifouling Polymers is out in Nanoscale!

Antifouling polymers are hydrophilic materials that are indispensable for both drug delivery and surface modification applications. In nanomedicine, they help prolong drug circulation lifetime by conferring stealth against the immune system, while in surface science, they help prevent molecules and biological matter from sticking to surfaces. How are antifouling polymers able to do this? We discuss this and more in our Review article, now published in Nanoscale!

 

 Link to article: https://doi.org/10.1039/D3NR03164K