

Scientists Discover First New Polymers in 20 Years - WestCoastJustin
http://mashable.com/2014/05/15/ibm-new-self-healing-polymer/

======
gone35
"Scientists Discover First New Polymers _in 20 Years._ "

No, not quite. New polymers are developed by the dozen in materials science
nowadays!

I think I see where the author got mixed up though: reversible thermosets
would be _quite_ novel in of themselves, and you could argue most breakthrough
developments in thermosets/thermoplastics are from decades ago. But this is
far from the only polymer family there is.

It's a shame. Clearly the author is way out of his depth here (e.g. 'Polymers
are essentially macromolecules made up of 10000 or more atoms'; 'the
researchers (...) are now _submitting_ their findings to Science'), but that's
what science editors are there for.

On the other hand, The New York Times has a much better article [1] and
reveals another twist: apparently the PI found the reaction by accident. Check
it out, and shame on Mashable for spreading bad science.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/science/error-leads-ibm-
re...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/science/error-leads-ibm-researchers-
to-a-new-family-of-materials.html?hpw&rref=technology&_r=1)

~~~
bigd
They are developed by the dozen, per day.

-former material scientist-

------
icegreentea
Link to the paper (paywalled):
[http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6185/732](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6185/732)

It be interesting to see how biocompatible and what the durability of these
material is. One of the problems with current generation of joint implants is
that nearly all of the materials we use (for biocompatibility, corrosion
resistance, and durability reasons) are all way stiffer than the material
(bone or cartilage) that they replace, resulting in stress shielding in bone,
and increased wear at contact surfaces in joints (especially when you only
have a one sided replacement).

If Titan (god, I hope they give it a better name) turns out to play nice in
the body and is sufficiently durable, it could be pretty interesting to see
what happens to implant design in the future.

~~~
twic
Right, so if i've got this right, 4,4'-oxydianiline is this (pairs of parens
are supposed to be circles denoting benzene rings; apologies for writing out
the carbons, i can't do plain hexagons):

    
    
            C - C       C - C
           /     \     /     \
      H2N-C  ( )  C-O-C  ( )  C-NH2
           \     /     \     /
            C - C       C - C
    

The paraformaldehyde does its job as monomeric formaldehyde (the double quote
is a double bond running vertically, horrific i know):

    
    
         O
         "
      HO-C-OH
    

And the polymerisation is a straightforward condensation of the formaldehyde
with one of the amines, so the monomer is:

    
    
               C - C       C - C      O
              /     \     /     \     "
      ...-NH-C  ( )  C-O-C  ( )  C-NH-C-...
              \     /     \     /
               C - C       C - C
    

And here's a monomer with a bit of its neighbourhood:

    
    
      - C      O      C - C       C - C      O      C -
         \     "     /     \     /     \     "     /
       )  C-NH-C-NH-C  ( )  C-O-C  ( )  C-NH-C-NH-C  (
         /           \     /     \     /           \
      - C             C - C       C - C             C -
    

There's nothing really radical in terms of the building blocks, but it's a
novel combination. Cool.

I had never come across oxydiamine before, but i get the impression it's a
common component in polymers, and it looks fairly boring and inert. I guess
it's not a single big aromatic system, right? Wrong number of electrons.

The reason this is described as a "hemiaminal" is because the formaldehyde
carbon can do keto-enol tautomerism and turn into this:

    
    
      - C      OH     C -
         \     |     /
       )  C-NH-C-NH-C  (
         /     |     \
      - C      OH     C -
    

Which has hydroxyl groups and nitrogens on the same carbon, and so is a
hemiaminal.

I couldn't figure out the "further cyclize at high temperatures, producing
poly(hexahydrotriazine)s", though. Does that mean cyclising using linkages
like this? Or is there some way the chains can crosslink?

~~~
bigd
those drawings are beautiful. how you did it? babel?

~~~
twic
I just typed a lot of letters, punctuation marks, and spaces into the text
area. Mostly spaces.

------
sfbsfbsfb
The scanning electron micrograph conveys little information while the chemical
structures would have been interesting even to amateur chemists. When new
science is inaccessible to citizens that don't want to pay for it twice it
should be the minimum responsibility of the scientific press to report the key
findings.In chemistry, that means structures.

