01/12/2019
Hermann Staudinger (23. 3. 1881 – 8. 9. 1965) gave plastics chemisty its theoretical foundations. Although his outstanding career as a scientist – doctorate at 22, professorship at 26 – culminated in the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Staudinger has remained largely unknown – as a public figure too – and only specialists are familiar with his life and work nowadays.16/11/2019
Technological progress would be inconceivable without the help of polymer materials and the stakeholders in the plastics industry. Strategic advances and major innovations in material development & deployment as well as in technological impact do not happen by accident. They are attributable to an extensive and in-depth understanding of material properties and modes of action.31/10/2019
With a new section we start the topic of the month in October 2019: K-online sets out to take a look behind the scenes of companies and scientific institutions. Our first visit took us to Dow's Ecology Laboratory in Stade, North Germany.17/09/2019
Is this the future? We produce Plastics from carbon dioxide (CO2)? Scientists all over the world are working on it. Four of them Four describe recent research results related to the quest to capture CO2 from the smokestacks of factories and power plants and use renewable energy to turn it into industrial feedstocks and fuels.29/08/2019
Who hasn’t ever dreamed of standing on the wooden boards of a boat at the coast with his eyes closed and a sea breeze blowing and of having all the time in the world to go on an expedition across the vast expanses of the ocean – without knowing where he would end up and when he would return? No problem: Grab the rubber boat and get out on the water.30/06/2019
Scientists have developed an ingenious idea that promises to be a solution to the Dilemma of downcycling. They are working on a plastic that acts like a set of Lego, in that its components can be taken apart at the molecular level and can then put back together again in new forms, textures and colours without any loss of performance and quality.08/05/2019
Once the war was lost and Nazi Germany collapsed, the victorious Allied powers switched acrylic from primarily military purposes to exclusively civil purposes. The versatility of its properties soon opened up new application areas and markets for polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA). ...08/04/2019
Röhm & Haas experienced not only an economic boom but also a tremendous improvement in its image, both in Germany and at the international level. Acrylic won the Grand Prix and the Gold Medal at the 1937 International Exposition in Paris (Röhm & Haas 1938, 28 and Wittig 2007, 42). The prizes were awarded in recognition not of the military ...05/03/2019
In the course of the 1930s, the first glass-like objects made from polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) came onto the market in Germany. Thanks to their many different advantages, they were strong competition for products made from conventional glass, particularly in aircraft and car manufacturing. The fact that demand for acrylic very soon went through the roof and enabled Röhm & Haas,...11/02/2019
“Xylochemistry”: a promising way to produce sustainable bioplastics.