To curb global plastic pollution and to make plastics safer and more sustainable, countries are currently negotiating a global treaty. A new study published in Nature provides a comprehensive and systematic overview of all chemicals that can be present in plastics, their properties, uses, and hazards. Moreover, the study also provides a scientific approach for identifying chemicals of concern. This allows scientists and manufacturers to develop safer plastics and policy makers to promote a non-toxic circular economy.

Conventional polyimides (PIs) exhibit excellent thermal stability and mechanical performance, yet their dielectric properties (dielectric constant (D_k) > 3.2, dissipation factor (D_f) > 0.005 @ 10 GHz). In previous reports, the introduction of trifluoromethyl reduced the dielectric constant and dissipation factor, but it increased chain rigidity, weakened hydrogen bonds interaction, and reduced free volume, which definitely reduced mechanical performance (such as poor toughness leading to crack risks in advanced packaging). Therefore, it is necessary to design PI materials with high toughness and low dielectric properties to meet the demands of advanced packaging technologies evolving towards millimeter-wave frequencies and heterogeneous integration. A research team has developed a novel fluorinated polyimide that reduces the material's dielectric constant and dissipation factor while enhancing its mechanical properties. Their work is published in the journal Industrial Chemistry & Materials on 03 Jun 2025.

Researchers have created graphene-based membranes that mimic the chemical gating effect in biological membranes, achieving record ion selectivity (>10,000) between monovalent and bivalent metal ions including Li⁺ and Mg²⁺ ions. The membrane allows adaptive ion permeation in response to certain signaling ions like Al³⁺, thus enables smart and ultrafast ion separation for applications in filtration, sensing, and energy technologies.

A Caltech team has found a way to sum particle interactions in real materials with quantitative accuracy.

A low-field anomalous quantum oscillation is discovered at ultra-clean LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interfaces, which is attributed to the time-reversal symmetry-protected transport along quasi-1D ferroelastic domain walls.