Originally Published 23 March 2004

Professor David Haddleton and his research team, from the Department of Chemistry, are spearheading a new technology for building designer polymers.

Polymers are essentially complex molecules used by nature itself to build things, an example of which is DNA, the foundation from which life is made. The term polymer is sometimes used instead of plastic, rubber or elastomer and increasingly polymers are required to meet the demands of new technology rather than replace natural materials.

According to Prof. David Haddleton, " More and more consumers and people in everyday life have more higher demands on the performance of the materials that they use… So if you have a mobile phone, you want the battery to last longer, you want the display to be bigger and more colourful, and to display more information. Now all of those things are due to new modern polymers”.

The polymer research team at Warwick is looking at the need to build new synthetic polymers to meet the needs of advanced applications.

Through a technique called living polymerisation, they are attempting to build synthetic polymers that exhibit the degree of sophistication characteristic of natural polymers.

Resulting from this development is the creation of Warwick Effect Polymers, a spin-off company designed to take the work done within the research laboratories up to the larger scale quantities required for consumer testing.

Warwick’s new generation of designer polymers have the potential to positively impact the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries as well as providing long term benefits for the environment

To view the feature Polymers to Go, visit the Research TV website at http://www.research-tv.com/stories/science/polymers/