{"id":208071,"date":"2025-03-07T12:17:56","date_gmt":"2025-03-07T18:17:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/a-new-way-to-engineer-composite-materials-polymer-design-combines-strength-with-reversibility"},"modified":"2025-03-07T12:17:56","modified_gmt":"2025-03-07T18:17:56","slug":"a-new-way-to-engineer-composite-materials-polymer-design-combines-strength-with-reversibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/a-new-way-to-engineer-composite-materials-polymer-design-combines-strength-with-reversibility","title":{"rendered":"A new way to engineer composite materials: Polymer design combines strength with reversibility"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-new-way-to-engineer-composite-materials-polymer-design-combines-strength-with-reversibility2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Composite adhesives like epoxy resins are excellent tools for joining and filling materials including wood, metal, and concrete. But there\u2019s one problem: once a composite sets, it\u2019s there forever. Now there\u2019s a better way. Researchers have developed a simple polymer that serves as a strong and stable filler that can later be dissolved. It works like a tangled ball of yarn that, when pulled, unravels into separate fibers.<\/p>\n<p>A new study led by researchers at the Department of Energy\u2019s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) outlines a way to engineer pseudo-bonds in materials. Instead of forming chemical bonds, which is what makes epoxies and other composites so tough, the chains of molecules entangle in a way that is fully reversible. The research is <a href=\"https:\/\/advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/adma.202415352\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Advanced Materials.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a brand new way of solidifying materials. We opened a new path to composites that doesn\u2019t go with the traditional ways,\u201d said Ting Xu, a faculty senior scientist at Berkeley Lab and one of the lead authors for the study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Composite adhesives like epoxy resins are excellent tools for joining and filling materials including wood, metal, and concrete. But there\u2019s one problem: once a composite sets, it\u2019s there forever. Now there\u2019s a better way. Researchers have developed a simple polymer that serves as a strong and stable filler that can later be dissolved. It works [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208071\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}