Polymer Science

Driven by the growing eco-awareness, bio-based polymers have been widely explored lately. In spite of important scientific breakthroughs, widespread technological usage is limited sometimes by performance mismatch with the currently used materials and often by the lack of scalability towards large-scale production. This study focuses on the combination of polysaccharides and proteins into a bilayer design that was shaped into flat films in a scaled-up fashion by continuous casting.

Polymeric membranes have gained considerable interest in both the scientific and industrial communities due to their wide range of applications. This technology has emerged as a cost-effective and environmentally friendly alternative for gas separation. A polymeric material for gas separation applications must exhibit high permeability and selectivity for one of the components in the mixture. Therefore, the development of new materials with high performance in gas separation involves finding a balance between these two parameters.

Water-based polymerization methods, such as emulsion polymerization, offer improved sustainability by reducing or eliminating volatile organic compound use.1 The US paints and coatings market has exhibited a yearly increase in demand, with the waterborne segment leading the largest market share. The demand for eco-friendly products is expected to positively impact market growth in the coming years.2 Both academia and industry have shown interest in cellulose nanocrystals (CNC), derived from biological sources, typically using sulfuric acid hydrolysis.