In a kind of addition-by-subtraction, chemists at the University of Florida have developed a technique to create highly porous materials from the ubiquitous building blocks of everyday plastics, and the end result could have applications in electronics, separations and battery manufacturing.
The trick isn’t what they add, but what they take out.
“It’s like what a sculptor might do with stone, where you gradually subtract more and more until you have what you want,” said Brent Sumerlin, Ph.D., a professor of chemistry at UF and senior author of the report. “We’re sculpting from within by creating pores from inside the material, which I don’t think would be possible by any method.”
Read more about Like Sculpting From Within: New Technique Builds Advanced Materials out of Basic Plastics.
