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

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.

Polymer upcycling research -- Project kickoff!

Polymer upcycling research is underway! Had a great project kickoff discussion today at our Neuros site (left). Nice change of scenery from Jurong Island (right). 

Grateful for the funding via my 2021 A*STAR Career Development Award ($182K USD). We will be investigating polymer upcycling via selective C-H functionalizations.