Plastic remains one of the most-used materials for making many things we use in our everyday lives. Things made of plastic can be very strong and last a long time. They also do well in extreme heat and cold. Plastic is also much lighter than metal and can easily be formed into different shapes. But plastic can take hundreds of years to break down on their own. Very few kinds are highly recyclable.
But a team of researchers working at the U.S. Department of Energy says it has created a kind of plastic that could lead to products that are 100 percent recyclable. The researchers say the new material is a plastic polymer called polydiketoenamine, or PDK. The team reports that the material can be broken down in parts at the molecular level.
It can then be built up again to form plastics of different shapes, colors and more. The researchers say this process can be repeated over and over again—without the plastic material losing any performance or quality.
“Most plastics were never made to be recycled," lead researcher Peter Christensen said in a statement. Christensen works at Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry center. “But we have discovered a new way to assemble plastics that takes recycling into consideration from a molecular perspective.”
本时文内容由奇速英语国际教育研究院原创编写，未经书面授权，禁止复制和任何商业用途，版权所有，侵权必究！（作者投稿及时文阅读定制请联系微信：400-1000-028）
13980503458
13980503458
admin@qisuen.cn
