MIT Engineers Create New Material Stronger Than Steel and Light as Plastic

THIS ^^^. My concerns are less and less about preserving my phone and more and more about preserving my planet. Show me a phone that can be completely recycled instead of giving me the illusion that it won't break because of x or y. Eventually it's going to be to sluggish for modern applications (because of its cpu or because of its battery).

I have a growing pile of now useless phones even at my house that I never broke because I take care of my investments.

And while I wouldn't expect a company to search out "right" solutions, I would hope that MIT as an educational institution could see beyond money and at least get in front of where the hockey puck should be, and not where it's tended to go (I'm speaking of sustainable profits on a planet in which we can live vs just amazing profits on an uninhabitable planet).

To add to your point. New R&D for plastics is probably where the solution to microplastics is going to come from.

Some researcher building the next superplastic pauses to say "hey that's funny" and bam we've got a new formula that completely prevents the formation of microplastics.

Artificially constraining development is a great way to either miss an important direction of research that will unknowingly solve our problems OR just kill the industry leaving us with our existing plastics that degrade into microplastics.

Of course new developments should definitely run a microplastics study to make sure we don't make the situation worse. However "no more this until that" is a great way to freeze ourselves into our current less than ideal state for decades longer than we have to be here.

Exactly, plastic is not a material but a very broad category of materials with a wide range of properties. Micro-plastics are a specific problem with some plastics and rubbers in e.g. tires and other materials on cars because they erode away with normal use and the resulting dust is then flushed into sewers, waterways, and eventually the ocean.

Material science is providing a wide range of new and exciting options that go above and beyond what we could do only a few years ago. Dismissing something with essentially no understanding whatsoever is not helpful.

The existing thermoplastic polymers use 1D chains.

The thermosetting polymers are initially synthesized as 1D chains, but after they are made into their intended form, the curing reaction cross-links all the 1D chains into a 3D network.

Because of its 3D structure, a cured thermosetting polymer can no longer be dissolved or melted. At high temperatures it will decompose or burn, instead of melting.

However, the thermosetting polymers, unlike covalent crystals like diamond, boron or silicon, have a 3D structure with big holes in it, so they are permeable to gases and other substances with small molecules.

The 2D polymer discussed in the parent article has a 2D structure similar to graphite sheets, i.e. a dense 2D lattice, without holes or pores.

This dense structure allows applications that cannot be done with traditional polymer coatings. This coating should be inpermeable like a glass, without being fragile.

The fact that it is light, as mentioned in the title, is pretty much irrelevant, because this is a material that is suitable only for coatings on objects made of other materials, not for the bulk material of an object.

Finally, plasteel.