AKRON, Ohio — As James Eagan, PhD, walks through the Polymer Innovation Center at Akron University, he sees a bright future.
As an associate professor at Akron University who works in the School of Polymer Science and Engineering, Eagan has seen firsthand the push from academics and industry executives to innovate polymers, which refers to both plastic and rubber materials.
“I’m very encouraged by the research, and I’m also very encouraged by the industrial attention,” Eagan said. “In the past 50 years that plastics have really dominated the material market, industry wanted to make better plastics; they wanted to make them higher performance and less expensive. Now the industry’s priority is, ‘Okay. We made them durable and high-performance. How do we make them degradable and recyclable?’”…