The big Chemjobber

business of on getting
gooey slime comfortable
P.18 with social
media
P.22
JUNE 18, 2018

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waste gets recycled. Chemists
have had enough
P.24
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 Contents VOLUME 96, NUMBER 25

June 18, 2018

Cover story

Recycling needs
a revamp
Chemical and biochemical approaches
take aim at plastic pollution
Page 24

Quote of the week Features

“Trade wars 19 Periodic Graphics:

The chemistry of slime
are very Andy Brunning wrings all the
molecular details out of the
bad, and popular goo

unwinnable.”
—Nariman Behravesh,
chief economist, IHS Markit 20 Good times, bad
Page 20 times for industry
A strong economy is
overshadowed by trade wars and
plastics woes
18 Stretching out the
slime fad 22 Social media 101
The kids’ chemistry activity has for scientists
become a big business Chemjobber on taking your first
dip into online networking

Departments ACS News

2 Editorial 38 C&ENjobs 35 ACS Comment
Illustration by Jesse Lenz 3 Concentrates 40 Newscripts 37 ACS News
CE NEA R 9 6 (25) 1–40 • ISSN 0009 -2347
 1155—16th St., N.W., Washington, DC 20036
Editorial
A big deal
(202) 872-4600 or (800) 227-5558

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Bibiana Campos Seijo

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR: Amanda Yarnell
OPERATIONS DIRECTOR: Kimberly Bryson

T
SENIOR ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER: Marvel A. Wills
he news last week was domi- Related to this, ACS Nano just pub-
BUSINESS nated by the historic summit lished an editorial titled “Envisioning
NEW YORK CITY: (212) 608-6306
Michael McCoy, Executive Editor between North Korea’s leader, Scientific Innovation in Korea’s De-
Rick Mullin (Senior Editor), Marc S. Reisch (Senior Correspondent), Alexander
H. Tullo (Senior Correspondent), Rachel Eskenazi (Administrative Assistant).
Kim Jong Un, and U.S. President militarized Zone: A Step toward Eco-
BOSTON: (202) 236-7633 Ryan Cross (Assistant Editor). Donald J. Trump, who met in Singapore on nomic Progress and Global Peace”
CHICAGO: (917) 710-0924 Lisa M. Jarvis (Senior Correspondent).
HONG KONG: 852 9093 8445 Jean‑François Tremblay (Senior June 12. The outcomes of their conversa- (DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.8b04249). The
Correspondent). LONDON: 44 1494 564 316 Alex Scott (Senior Editor). tion are the matter of much debate, and al- editorial focuses on the DMZ (Demili-
WEST COAST: (315) 825-8566 Melody M. Bomgardner (Senior Editor)
though the specifics remain nebulous, the tarized Zone), a narrow corridor—4 km
POLICY
WEST COAST: (925) 519-6681 Jyllian Kemsley, Executive Editor
accepted view is that the U.S. president wide, 250 km long—that extends across
WASHINGTON: Cheryl Hogue (Senior Correspondent) committed to end joint military exercises the peninsula and acts as a physical barri-
Britt E. Erickson (Senior Editor), Andrea L. Widener (Senior Editor)
with South Korea and made other unspec- er between North and South Korea. This
SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY/EDUCATION
WASHINGTON: Lauren K. Wolf, Executive Editor, Deputy Editorial Director
ified “security guarantees” in exchange natural border, which features wetlands,
Celia Henry Arnaud (Senior Correspondent), Stuart A. Borman (Senior for the North Korean leader’s promise to mountains, valleys, forests, and rich
Correspondent), Matt Davenport (Senior Editor, Multimedia), Carmen Drahl
(Senior Correspondent), Kerri Jansen (Assistant Editor, Multimedia), abandon the nation’s nuclear weapons wildlife, was formed upon the signing of
Tien M. Nguyen (Assistant Editor), Cici Zhang (Editorial Fellow). programs. the armistice agreement in 1953 after the
BOSTON: (973) 922-0175 Bethany Halford (Senior Correspondent).
CHICAGO: (847) 679-1156 Mitch Jacoby (Senior Correspondent). Besides the meeting with Trump and devastating Korean War. It has land mines,
WEST COAST: (626) 765-6767 Michael Torrice (Science News
Editor), (202) 815-6827 Sam Lemonick (Assistant Editor)
recent encounters with the leaders of Chi- barbed-wire fences, and a strong military
JOURNAL NEWS & COMMUNITY na and South Korea, Kim had hinted that presence on both sides.
(510) 768-7657 Corinna Wu (Senior Editor)
(651) 447-6226 Jessica H. Marshall (Associate Editor) change was afoot in an April speech, when The DMZ’s inaccessibility has allowed
he said that North Korea would put an end damaged forests and farmlands to reha-
ACS NEWS & SPECIAL FEATURES
Linda Wang (Senior Correspondent) to nuclear tests and turn its attention to bilitate and return to a natural state, while
PRODUCT MANAGER: Jessica Morrison
economic growth fueled by investments the land to the north has suffered defor-
in science and education. This points at a estation along with environmental degra-
AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT EDITOR: Dorea I. Reeser
Arminda Downey-Mavromatis (Contributing Editor) new focus on diplomacy for North Korea, dation from military operations, and the
EDITING & PRODUCTION
and it is a big deal—if it indeed becomes land to the south has grown in population
Sabrina J. Ashwell (Assistant Editor), Craig Bettenhausen (Associate Editor), a reality. The international community is and suffered the consequences of that—
Luis A. Carrillo (Web ­Production Manager), Melissa T. Gilden (Assistant
Editor), Taylor C. Hood (Digital Content Producer/Taxonomy Specialist), hopeful that the talks, discussions, and habitat destruction and fragmentation and
Manny I. Fox Morone (Associate Editor), Alexandra A. Taylor (Assistant Editor) shift in focus will bring about the prospect pollution of waterways and farmlands by
C&EN MEDIA PRODUCTION LAB of peace, or at least improved relations, pesticides, fertilizers, and industrial and
Robert Bryson, Creative Director, Head of Media Production Lab
Tchad K. Blair, Head of UI/UX Design
greater openness, and some steps toward municipal waste. The DMZ has become
Ian Bakar (Associate Designer), Robin L. Braverman (Senior Art Director), denuclearization. what the authors of the editorial call an
Ty A. Finocchiaro (Senior Web ­Associate), Yang H. Ku (Art Director),
William A. Ludwig (Art Director), Kay Youn (Art Director) It’s a good thing that Kim sees science ecological sanctuary. They point to the
as key to his country’s future. Besides its field of pollen materials research based on
C&EN BRANDLAB
Rajendrani Mukhopadhyay, Executive Editor potential economic impact, science is a pollen grains present in the DMZ as an ex-
Jeff Lee (Senior Editor), Kirsten Dobson (Marketing Manager)
subject around which one can build rela- ample of an area in which scientific coop-
SALES & MARKETING tionships. Much of the country’s research eration and innovation between North and
Stephanie Holland, Assistant Director, Advertising Sales & Marketing
Natalia Bokhari (Advertising Operations Manager), has been driven by what would be useful South Korea is possible. This small piece
Sondra Hadden (Senior Marketing Manager), Joyleen SanFeliz Parnell
­(Advertising Operations Associate), Quyen Pham (Lead Generation
to its military. Currently, its main research of shared land has the potential to turn
­Associate), Ed Rather (Recruitment Advertising Product Manager), areas, judging by publication output, are a low-value and abundant material into
Kierra Tobiere (Recruitment Sales & Marketing Associate)
engineering, physics, chemistry, and ma- a high-value material with medical and
ADVISORY BOARD terials science. Further investments could pharmaceutical applications, they suggest.
Deborah Blum, Raychelle Burks, Jinwoo Cheon, Kendrew H. Colton,
François-Xavier Coudert, Cathleen Crudden, Gautam R. Desiraju, allow these and other fields to flourish, A small step toward peace.
Luis Carlos Diaz, Paula T. Hammond, Matthew Hartings, Christopher Hill,
Yan Liang, Javier García Martínez, Peter Nagler, Daniel García Rivera,
enriching the scientific fabric of the coun-
Anubhav Saxena, Dan Shine, Michael Sofia, William Tolman, James C. Tung, try. If North Korea is more open, then we
Jill Venton, Helma Wennemers, Geofrey K. Wyatt, Deqing Zhang
should expect an increase in scientific
Published by the AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY output beyond the tens of papers it pub-
Thomas M. Connelly Jr., Executive Director & CEO
Brian D. Crawford, President, Publications Division lishes each year in international journals.
EDITORIAL BOARD: Nicole S. Sampson (Chair),
We should also expect an increase in the
ACS Board of Directors Chair John E. Adams, number and diversity of its collaborations.
ACS President Peter K. Dorhout, Cynthia J. Burrows,
Jerzy Klosin, Julia Laskin, John Russell North Korea’s biggest collaborators are
Copyright 2018, American Chemical Society
China, followed by Germany and South
Canadian GST Reg. No. R127571347 Korea. Russia has long been a partner on
Volume 96, Number 25
nuclear energy research. Greater openness
is likely to transform the way science is Editor-in-chief
done in North Korea. @BibianaCampos

Views expressed on this page are those of the author and not necessarily those of ACS.

2 C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | JUNE 18, 2018

 Concentrates
▸ Highlights
Analyzing CO oxidation on Pt 4
Nobel laureates die at 99 5
Transgenic cotton feeds on phosphite 6
Psychedelics forge neuron connections 6
China swoons over cleantech, biotech stocks 12

Chemistry news from the week G7 leaders sign plastics pledge

Ikea, Neste advance biobased polypropylene
Kulinowski to lead Chemical Safety Board
13
13
17

DIVERSITY
Sexual harassment
pervasive in science
Cultural change needed to prevent injury to female
faculty and students, National Academies study says
A widespread culture of sexual harassment
drives women away from science careers
and perpetuates a gender gap, according to
a new report from the National Academies
of Sciences, Engineering & Medicine.
Large percentages of women in science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics
(STEM) fields report being harassed. That
includes 50% of female faculty and staff and
20 to 50% of students, the report says.
“The cumulative effect of sexual harass-
ment is a significant and costly loss of tal-
ent in science, engineering, and medicine,”
says committee member Lilia Cortina, a
University of Michigan psychology profes-
sor who has studied harassment.
important issue. “They offer the findings,
conclusions, and recommendations in a
spirit of optimism: that addressing sexual
harassment is everybody’s responsibility,”
she says. “It is going to take all of us to real-
ly combat sexual harassment.”
A complete culture change is needed to
address sexual harassment in universities,
the report says. Too often, universities have
just done what is required by law, but that
isn’t enough. “Sexual harassment is primar-
ily a problem of organizational culture,”
Cortina says. “Academic institutions need
to move away from a culture of compliance
and toward a culture of respect.”
Sexual harassment doesn’t have to in-
Science and sexual
harassment
Why STEM disciplines are
particularly ripe for harassment,
according to the National Academies
of Sciences, Engineering & Medicine:
▸▸The dependence on advisers and
mentors for career advancement
▸▸The system of meritocracy that
does not account for the declines in
productivity and morale as a result of
sexual harassment.
▸▸The “macho” culture in some fields.
▸▸The informal communication
network, in which rumors and
accusations are spread within and
across specialized programs and fields.
Key changes needed to stop sexual
harassment:
▸▸Integrate values into the system.
▸▸Change the power dynamic.
▸▸Support targets of sexual
harassment.
▸▸Improve transparency and

50%
volve propositioning, touching,
or assault to cause problems.
If pervasive, behaviors often
brushed off as unimportant—
such as offhand comments
about someone’s appearance or
capabilities and other actions
Female U.S. faculty and staff who report being harassed labeled as gender harassment—
can do just as much damage,
Source: National Academies report, “Sexual Harassment of Women”
the report points out. Harass-
Targets of harassment report lower job ment is especially widespread for minori-
satisfaction and often withdraw from or ties and people who identify as lesbian, gay,
quit their jobs, the report says. Others re- bisexual, transgender, or queer, who can
port depression or posttraumatic stress. face multiple forms of discrimination.
STEM fields, including chemistry, are Changing academic culture has to start
particularly vulnerable to sexual harass- with leaders who make it clear sexual ha-
ment because men still far outnumber rassment will not be tolerated, the report
women in faculty and leadership positions, says. Universities should set clear, escalat-
and students usually rely on a single adviser ing consequences for harassment and focus
to guide their research and promote their their training on what people should do if
careers, the report adds. they are harassed or witness harassment.
Chemist Mary Boyd, provost of Berry Academic institutions should also in-
College, is glad the committee took on this crease diversity at all levels, provide more
accountability.
support for targets of harassment, decrease
tolerance for harassment, reduce the power
that faculty have over students, and publi-
cize harassment reports and consequences.
The National Academies report also calls
on scientific societies to help change the
culture of sexual harassment. For example,
the report recommends that societies help
support people who are harassed.
David Smorodin, assistant general coun-
sel for the American Chemical Society, says
he appreciates that the report recognizes
that societies can play an important role
in making that change. The report “really
does present a challenge to all professional
scientific societies,” he says.
Changing universities will be a challenge,
Boyd says. “Sometimes there needs to be an
incentive, and so far there has not been a
great incentive.”—ANDREA WIDENER

JUNE 18, 2018 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN 3

 Science Concentrates
SURFACE CHEMISTRY
Analyzing CO oxidation on Pt
New surface chemistry method answers mechanistic
questions that have eluded chemists for 40 years
A new surface chemistry technique has
allowed researchers to determine the long-
sought mechanisms of one of the most
studied reactions in heterogeneous cataly-
sis: the oxidation of carbon monoxide on a
platinum surface.
Catalytic CO oxidation cleans up emis-
sions from motor vehicles and
industrial smokestacks. Studied
for about 40 years, it is a textbook
system for the experimental and
theoretical understanding of het-
erogeneous oxidations—gaseous
reactions on catalytic surfaces.
The CO reaction is complex. Pt
surfaces have two possible active
sites. About 99% of each surface
is flat terraces with moderate cat-
alytic activity, and the other 1% is
highly active steps between layers
of Pt atoms. The reaction also pro-
duces two types of CO2 molecules:
hyperthermal, with high energies
and velocities, and thermal, with
moderate energies and speeds.
Scientists have lacked analytical
tools to unpack these complexi-
ties, so the exact mechanisms by
which CO gets oxidized have been A timed beam of CO molecules hits a Pt surface, where CO erogeneously catalyzed chemical
a mystery. The consensus view was is oxidized to CO2. Laser slice-ion imaging (vertical blue
that a single type of reaction on dashed line) measures properties of the released CO2.
MATERIALS
‘Green’ coating protects plastics
Devices that can flex and stretch, including
wearable electronics, roll-up solar cells,
and foldable displays, are all the rage these
days. Engineers design those devices to
keep working, bend after bend. A tough,
transparent, eco-friendly coating applied to
the plastic support might help those devic-
es last even longer, a study suggests (ACS
Nano 2018, DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.8b01057).
Many plastic devices have thin coatings
designed to go unnoticed. Measuring just a
fraction of a micrometer in thickness, these
nearly invisible films of organic and inor-
ganic materials improve a wide range of
commercial products. For example, polysi-
4 C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | JUNE 18, 2018
terrace sites produced both hyperthermal
and thermal CO2.
Theofanis N. Kitsopoulos at Max
Planck Institute for Biophysical Chem-
istry and coworkers now provide a more
nuanced view (Nature 2018, DOI: 10.1038/
s41586-018-0188-x). They used a molecular
loxane coatings on polycarbonate eyeglass
lenses make them scratch resistant.
Knowing that manufacturers are always
on the lookout for new types of cost-ef-
fective coatings, a team led by Stanford
University materials scientists Farhan An-
sari and Reinhold H. Dauskardt looked to
an unusual place for source material—the
forest.
The team made hybrid coatings by em-
bedding various concentrations of nano-
cellulose fibrils, a tough material derived
from trees, in a glass matrix composed of
zirconium alkoxide and an epoxy-func-
tionalized silane. The team used low-cost
beam to shoot CO at an O2-bound Pt sur-
face at precise times and then employed
slice-ion imaging to determine the reaction
site, speed, and escape angle for specific
CO2 molecules flying off the surface. These
tools had not been used together before
to measure the speed and direction of sur-
face-generated species.
The study shows that the reaction has
three mechanisms. Two produce thermal
CO2 and predominate at temperatures
below about 700 K: Either terrace
CO diffuses to a step and reacts
there with an oxygen atom, or CO
already on a step reacts with step
O. In the third mechanism, pre-
dominant at high temperatures,
terrace CO reacts with terrace O
to make hyperthermal CO2.
The results “are phenomenal,”
says surface chemist Dan Killelea
of Loyola University Chicago.
“The ability to experimentally dis-
tinguish among different possible
catalytic reaction sites on a surface
is a long-sought goal” that the new
approach makes possible.
The strategy could be applied to
other heterogeneous surface reac-
tions as well. “It has the potential
to shift the entire focus of efforts
to understand mechanisms of het-
reactions,” Killelea says.—STU
BORMAN
colloidal chemistry methods to prepare
the precursor solutions and then sprayed
the mixtures onto flexible polymer sub-
strates, including poly(ether imide) and
poly(ethylene terephthalate), and then
cured the films at low temperature. The
results were highly transparent, nanome-
ter-thick films.
Tests indicate that coatings containing
20 wt % nanocellulose protect the polymer
substrates by boosting hardness and frac-
C R E D I T: NAT UR E
ture resistance. Microscopy analysis shows
that even after 20,000 bending cycles, the
films revealed no signs of delamination or
cracking.—MITCH JACOBY
 OBITUARIES
Nobel laureates die at 99
Jens C. Skou and Paul D. Boyer were two winners of
the 1997 chemistry prize for ATP-related studies
Two laureates who shared the 1997 Nobel
Prize in Chemistry, Jens C. Skou and Paul
D. Boyer, died the same week, on May 28
and June 2, respectively, both at age 99.
Both made key discoveries involving ade-
nosine triphosphate (ATP), the universal
energy currency of cells.
Skou was born in 1918 in Lemvig, Den-
mark. He earned an M.D. at the University
of Copenhagen in 1944 and a Ph.D. in
physiology at Aarhus University in 1954.
In 1957, while studying anesthetic
drugs at Aarhus University, he discovered
CR E DI T: AS SO CI AT E D P R ESS (B OT H )
Na+,K+-adenosine triphosphatase. The
enzyme helps maintain proper salt balance
across neuronal cell membranes, setting
up voltage differences that cause nerve
impulses and muscle contractions. He re-
tired in 1988 and was awarded half of the
1997 Nobel Prize for his 1957 discovery.
He was “a cornerstone and a beacon
for research,” said dean of health Lars
Bo Nielsen in an Aarhus University press
release after Skou died. Skou is survived
by his wife, Ellen, their two daughters and
sons-in-law, four grandchildren, and one
great-grandchild.
Boyer was born in 1918 in Provo,
Utah. He earned a B.S. in chemistry from
Brigham Young University in 1939 and a
Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of
Wisconsin in 1943. In 1963, he moved to
UCLA, where he became founding direc-
tor of the university’s Molecular Biology
Institute and managed the construction
of the institute’s building, which was later
named in his honor.
Boyer “had outstanding character,” says
UCLA colleague David Eisenberg. “Every-
one liked him and admired him. He was a
modest and thoughtful leader.”
In the 1970s, Boyer developed a set
of mechanistic proposals that described
how the enzyme ATP synthase converts
Boyer Skou
adenosine diphosphate and inorganic
phosphate into ATP. For this work, Boyer
shared the other half of the 1997 Nobel
Prize with the researcher who verified his
ATP synthase mechanism experimentally,
John E. Walker of the Medical Research
Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology.
Boyer donated a majority of his prize mon-
ey to fund chemistry postdoctoral fellows
at UCLA and two other institutions.
Boyer is survived by his wife Lyda, two
daughters, eight grandchildren, and six
great-grandchildren. A son, Douglas, died
in 2001.—STU BORMAN
JUNE 18, 2018 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN 5
Science Concentrates
NEUROSCIENCE

Psychedelics forge
neuron connections
Study in rats and fruit flies could aid Pigweed infests a Texas cotton field.
design of better antidepressants BIOTECHNOLOGY
About one-third of people with depression do not find relief with
current drugs. One possible alternative to those agents is the anes-
thetic ketamine, which often works in patients who don’t respond to
GM cotton feeds
conventional drugs, but it can also lead to hallucinations and abuse.
Scientists hope to understand ketamine’s antidepressant mecha-
nism and design new molecules without those side effects.
on phosphite
Now, a study reports that other psychedelic compounds have Technology may outwit weeds
similar effects on neurons as ketamine does: They promote the
growth of connections between neurons (Cell Rep. 2018, DOI:
and mitigate fertilizer pollution
10.1016/j.celrep.2018.05.022). The work suggests new chemical Wily weeds can develop resistance to herbicides, allow-
scaffolds that could mimic ing them to compete with genetically modified crops
ketamine’s antidepressant Control 5 µm designed to tolerate weed-killing chemicals. Now, a team
properties, says lead au- is proposing another approach to genetically engineering
thor David Olson of the crops to outgrow weeds: cotton that feeds on an alterna-
University of California, tive fertilizer, one that weeds can’t use (Proc. Natl. Acad.
Davis. H3CO I Sci. USA 2018, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1804862115).
Previous research had DMT “This work is exactly the sort of genetic engineering
shown that ketamine rap- that I would like to see more of, traits that expand the
idly grows synapses—the realm of what farmers can do while protecting the envi-
connections between neu- OCH3 ronment,” says Anastasia Bodnar, a plant geneticist who
rons—in parts of the brain Rat neurons treated with DMT grew was not involved with the work and is the policy director
involved in mood. In this H2Noffshoots)
more connections (yellow for Biology Fortified, a nonprofit organization that fos-
new work, Olson’s team than untreated neurons didDOI
(top). ters discussion on biotechnology and agriculture.
found that psychedelic Regular plants need phosphate to grow, but the new
compounds, including N,N-dimethyltryptamine cotton can survive on phosphite instead because the crop
(DMT), 2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodoamphetamine NH is engineered to contain a bacterial gene that confers the
(DOI), and LSD, can also increase the number ability to convert phosphite to phosphate, explains Luis
of synaptic connections in the brains of rats and Herrera-Estrella of Mexico’s National Laboratory of Ge-
fruit flies, as well as in cultured neurons from nomics for Biodiversity, who co-led the work with Texas
the animals. The team had demonstrated before A&M University’s Keerti Rathore. Their combined teams
that DMT produced antidepressant-like effects H3C N developed transgenic cotton that grows just as well on
in rats (ACS Chem. Neurosci. 2018, DOI: 10.1021/ CH3 phosphite as regular cotton grows on phosphate. In soils

C R E D I T: TEXAS A & M AGR I L I FE ( P I GWE E D ) ; C E L L R EP ORTS ( MI C RO GRAP H )

acschemneuro.8b00134). DMT
In the current study, the scientists deter-
mined that the psychedelics promote synaptic growth through a
similar signaling pathway involving the protein mTORN that ket-
amine does. Ronald Duman, a neuroscientist at Yale University who CH3
O
studies ketamine, says that the findings are “interesting N
and import-
H
ant” because they could explain how these agents might treat mood
disorders. While ketamine activates the mTOR pathway by blocking
N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors on neurons, the psychedelic com-
pounds do so by activating a different target, the 5-HT2A receptor,
which according to Duman suggests a novel approach for treatingNH
depression. LSD
But David Feifel, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at the Univer-
sity of California, San Diego, says more work is needed to connect
the reported mechanisms to these drugs’ antidepressant properties.
The next step, he says, would be to block the pathway outlined in
this study and then see if that prevents the drugs from producing an
antidepressant effect in animals.—CICI ZHANG
with varied chemical and nutrient profiles, the plants
outcompeted a bane of cotton farmers’ existence: Palmer
amaranth, or pigweed, which resists the common herbi-
cide glyphosate. The first trials outside the greenhouse
commence later this month in Texas. A spin-off company
cofounded by Herrera-Estrella, StelaGenomics, is devel-
oping the technology for use with other crops.
Phosphite is used to kill fungi in crops, but manu-
facturers would need to scale up production to accom-
modate fertilizer demands, if this strategy ever reaches
widespread use. Farmers might be able to apply less
phosphite than they would phosphate, Bodnar says.
Phosphate can run off farmlands into waterways, where
the compound promotes the growth of toxic and harmful
algal blooms. But phosphite should be used carefully,
Bodnar adds, because long-term use might select for
bacteria in soil and waterways that convert phosphite
to phosphate, thus recreating the phosphate prob-
lem.—CARMEN DRAHL

6 C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | JUNE 18, 2018

 ASTROCHEMISTRY

Mysterious galactic radiation

pinned on diamonds
Spinning nanodiamonds may be source
of anomalous microwave emission
When electrons and protons formed the
first hydrogen atoms some 379,000 years
after the Big Bang, they freed up photons
to travel the universe. We still see those
photons today as microwave emissions.
Astronomers mapping this cosmic micro-
wave background in the 1990s to better
understand the universe’s genesis noticed
other signals coming from our own galaxy
that they couldn’t explain. This anomalous
microwave emission (AME) has long been
CR E DI T: N ASA / W M A P SCI E N CE T EAM
sure events like colli- A map of
sions or supernovae. microwave
Atomic hydrogen— radiation from
speeds that could generate the observed abundant in interstellar across the
wavelengths of microwave emissions. The space—forms a layer on universe.
prevailing hypothesis was that the particles their surface, and col-
consisted of ring-shaped hydrocarbons lisions with other particles can give them
because of the molecules’ abundance in the a dipole moment. That, along with their
dust that whirls around some young stars. propensity to spin, means they could emit
But a 2016 study found that AME and signa- microwave radiation.
tures of PAHs didn’t originate in the same Clive Dickinson of the University of
places, casting that proposal into doubt. Manchester says the results would be
Jane Greaves of Cardiff University was stronger if they were based on more ob-
studying dust disks around stars when she servations. So astronomers need to collect

ascribed to polycyclic aromatic hydrocar-
bons (PAHs). A new study suggests the real
source may be nanoscopic diamonds (Na-
ture 2018, DOI: 10.1038/s41550-018-0495-z).
Charged, rotating particles radiate elec-
tromagnetic energy. Astronomers thought
nanoparticles were the most likely source
of AME because they’re light enough that
random collisions could spin them at
spotted AME signals. The three stars the
signals were coming from were the only
ones in her sample where astronomers had
observed signatures of hydrogenated nan-
odiamonds. These tetrahedral diamonds
contain just a few hundred carbon atoms
and are about a nanometer or less wide.
Their origin isn’t known for certain, but
Greaves says they likely form in high-pres-
more high-resolution observations to deter-
mine if diamonds produce AME elsewhere.
Greaves says one of her students is
examining published spectra of nanodi-
amonds to see if the researchers can nail
down whether nanodiamonds—including
the ones found in meteorites in our own
solar system—are produced locally or come
from common sources.—SAM LEMONICK

American Chemical Society

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JUNE 18, 2018 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN 7

 Science Concentrates
SYNTHESIS
▸▸ Simplified Birch
reduction skips
the ammonia
To break compounds’ aromaticity, chem-
ists commonly rely on the 74-year-old
Birch reduction, which uses sodium metal
and ammonia. However, the components’
moisture-sensitive nature—requiring
practitioners to trot out potentially haz-
ardous ammonia tanks to freshly distill
the reagent—makes running the reaction
a chore. A modified Birch reduction
developed in Jie An’s lab at China Agri-
cultural University lets scientists skip
the arduous set-up (Org. Lett. 2018, DOI:
10.1021/acs.orglett.8b00891). The re-
searchers’ first experiences with the Birch
reduction, attempting to reduce graphite
to graphene, resulted in long set-up times
and a small, but likely still smelly, ammo-
Sodium, crown ether
R Isopropanol, THF, 0 °C
R
The new Birch 24 examples
conditions
reduce aromatic, nia leak, spurring
heteroaromatic, them to try to
alkenyl and alkynyl simplify things.
compounds. The new method
replaces ammo-
nia with the commercial crown ether
15-crown-5, which can be recovered after
the reaction. The crown ether takes on
ammonia’s role for the most part; it mix-
es with a bench-stable sodium dispersion
to form the solvated electrons that re-
duce the substrates and give the reaction
its signature blue hue. However, tertiary
amides, typically converted to alcohols
under standard Birch conditions, survived
in the team’s reaction, suggesting that the
crown ether reagent switches the mech-
anism from an inner- to an outer-sphere
electron transfer.—TIEN NGUYEN
ENERGY STORAGE
▸▸ Diamond may be
batteries’ best friend
Lithium-ion batteries, which power most
of today’s portable electronics and many
vehicles, rely on electrodes that combine
lithium with the oxides of cobalt, nick-
8 C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | JUNE 18, 2018
This rubber circuit board with embedded liquid metals remains conductive
even when stretched up to five times its length.
ELECTRONIC MATERIALS
Liquid-metal circuit can
be printed and peeled
A new print-and-peel method for making stretchable electronics is based on
liquid metals (iScience 2018, DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2018.05.013). Gallium-based al-
loys are highly conductive and liquid at low temperatures, so they can serve as
conductors in soft electronics that must bend and flex. Researchers can print
custom circuit patterns using liquid-metal inks created by dispersing droplets
of the alloy in a solvent. But droplets of gallium alloys quickly form a thin oxide
skin, inhibiting conductivity in the printed pattern. To overcome that issue, a
team led by Xingyu Jiang of China’s National Center for Nanoscience & Tech-
nology screen-printed a eutectic gallium-indium alloy onto a plastic substrate,
then cast a flexible rubber layer on top of the liquid-metal pattern. After the
rubber cured around the pattern, they peeled the rubber off. The oxide layer
surrounding each droplet tends to stick to the substrate as the pattern is pulled
away, so the oxide skin breaks and the droplets merge to form a conductive
path embedded in the rubber layer. The liquid-metal circuit remained conduc-
tive even when stretched to five times its length.—KERRI JANSEN
el, manganese, and other metals. Pure mance-reducing reactions with common
lithium electrodes provide higher charge battery electrolytes and poses safety haz-
capacity than mixed metal forms. But ards, especially during charging. Aiming
lithium metal’s reactivity leads to perfor- to exploit the metal’s advantages while
bypassing its problems, Stanford Univer-
sity scientists searched for a thin film to
protect the electrode surface. The film
had to be electrochemically stable; free
C R E D I T: TA N G E T A L. /iS C I ENC E ( C IRC UI T ) ; J OU L E ( BAT T ERY)
from pinholes that allow dendrites to grow
and short-circuit the battery, potentially
igniting it; flexible enough to stretch and
shrink during charging cycles without
cracking; and able to allow unimpeded
flow of lithium ions to and from the metal
electrode. The team, which includes Yayu-
an Liu, Steven Chu, and Yi Cui, met those
requirements by using a low-cost depo-
sition method to grow a two-layer, nano-
meter-thin diamond film (Joule 2018, DOI:
Coating metallic lithium battery 10.1016/j.joule.2018.05.007). The dou-
electrodes with two layers of diamond ble-layer design, which effectively blocks
(false colored to distinguish between pinholes, led to energy-efficient cells that
them) prevents undesirable reactions and remained stable through more than 400
safety hazards. charge cycles.—MITCH JACOBY
 MEDICINAL CHEMISTRY
▸▸ Chili pepper
compound made
to self-destruct
Capsaicin, the compound that gives chili
peppers their heat, soothes pain and itch
by acting on an ion channel called TRPV1
in cells. But along with this relief, capsa-
icin and some of its derivatives can deliver
troubling side effects, including a burning
sensation and fever spikes. Now research-
ers have developed a modified capsaicin
that skin enzymes inactivate within
hours, averting some side effects while
demonstrating pain and itch relief in mice
(J. Med. Chem. 2018, DOI: 10.1021/acs.
jmedchem.8b00109). Asia Fernández-Car-
vajal of Miguel Hernández University,
Tracey Pirali of the University of Eastern
Piedmont, and their colleagues made cap-
saicin derivatives (example shown) with
a built-in self-destruct switch: an ester
bond in the tail of the compounds. Ester-
ase enzymes in skin hydrolyze this bond,
producing two metabolites that the body
easily eliminates. The researchers tested
the compounds for activity on TRPV1 and
then assayed the most potent candidates
in human skin cells to find those that
were significantly hydrolyzed. In mice, the
O which can cause bad odors and increase
CH3O N the chances of tooth decay and gum dis-
H ease (ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2018, DOI:
C R E D I T: A NG EW. CH EM . I N T. ED. ( N A N O SAT U R N ST RUCT UR ES ) ; JAOW FAH / S H U T T E RSTO CK (R E TAI N E RS )
NANOMATERIALS
NanoSaturn synthesized
Saturn and its extraordinary rings have captivated scientists since they
first started peering through telescopes. Chemists have now created a
molecular homage to this heavenly body by building a
so-called nanoSaturn out of just carbon and hydro-
gen (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2018, DOI: 10.1002/
anie.201804430). A team led by Tokyo Institute
of Technology’s Shinji Toyota synthesized the
supramolecular complex by trapping a C60
within a large, hydrocarbon ring composed
of substituted anthracene units. Scientists
previously captured fullerenes with belt-type
hydrocarbons or disk-like thiophene-based mac-
rocycles, but this is the first example of a nanoSat-
urn with a disk-type hydrocarbon ring. To make the
molecular assembly, the chemists simply combine the hydrocarbon ring
system with C60, and weak CH–π interactions hold the system together.
The researchers determined the
nanoSaturn’s structure using X-ray
crystallography (shown). Toyota
notes the macrocyclic compounds
might be useful for extracting or
sieving fullerenes, but that wasn’t
his main motivation. “What is most
exciting for me,” he says, “is that this beautiful and harmonized shape can
arouse the curiosity of any observer as planet Saturn does.”—BETHANY
HALFORD
maceuticals, and positively charged chi-
tosan, derived from crustacean shells, onto
sheets of poly(ethylene terephthalate)

HO 10.1021/acsami.8b04433). Jinkee Hong of (PET), the transparent plastic used to

Capsaicin Yonsei University, Hyo-Wan Anh of Kyung
Hee University, and colleagues wanted
antibacterial films for plastics that would
O endure the hodgepodge of enzymes and
CH3O O C11H23 pHs the mouth encounters, while being
N
H safe for oral use and made from readily
HO O available materials. They electrostatically
I
deposited alternating layers of negatively
Ester-containing capsaicin derivative
charged carboxymethylcellulose, a com-
best-performing molecule reduced sensi- mon thickener used in food and phar-
tivity to heat, touch, and itch without
producing body temperature spikes.
The effects lasted up to 90 minutes.
 DEIRDRE LOCKWOOD, special to
— PATEL, special to
C&EN
make most dental devices. The resulting
coating attracted a smooth, ultrathin wa-
ter film that stopped bacteria from stick-
ing. After 24 hours of exposure to a com-
mon oral bacterium, a coated PET sheet
had 75% less bacterial growth than an un-
coated sheet. The coating resisted artificial
saliva solutions with varying acidity levels
and enzymes, and the coated
plastic was slightly stron-
ger and more fracture-re-
sistant than uncoated
plastic.—PRACHI
C&EN

Dental
COATINGS retainers,
▸▸ Say good-bye invisible tooth
aligners, and
to retainer scuzz night guards tend
to accumulate
bacteria in their
A new coating could protect retainers, nooks and crannies,
clear tooth aligners, and other plastic even with regular
dental appliances from bacterial growth, cleaning.

JUNE 18, 2018 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN 9

 CHEMISTRY Do science, take

IN PICTURES
pictures, win money.
Enter our photo contest at
cen.chempics.org or e-mail
cenchempics@acs.org.
Selections from cen.chempics.org,
where C&EN showcases the beauty of chemistry

Lapus lattice
Rohit Bhargava and colleagues at the University of Illinois, Urbana-
Champaign, used a three-dimensional printer to construct this
rabbit from isomalt, a sugar alcohol often used to make edible cake
decorations, mixed with rhodamine dye. As the team prints with
the mixture, the isomalt hardens into place. The scientists would
like to grow cells and tissues on the resulting lattices and then melt
away the isomalt, leaving behind cylindrical tubes that mimic blood
vessels. These structures could enable researchers to study
tissues or tumors in the lab in a reproducible manner.—
ALEXANDRA TAYLOR

Credit: Troy Comi

Call of Cthulhu
At his day job, Chemistry In Pictures reader
Charles M works in a lab that makes ultrasound
gels for materials science and failure analysis
experiments. But he also applies his scientific
skills around his house. He bought a supply
of the fluorescent dye fluorescein and used
it to detect a leak in his truck’s coolant lines.
Afterward, he suspended the leftovers in
silicone resin to make this custom figurine for a
tabletop role-playing game. “Call of Cthulhu is
a role-playing game like Dungeons & Dragons,
but with a horror theme based on the cosmic
fiction of H.P. Lovecraft,” Charles explains.
“Science plays a huge part in the game, which
takes place in the Prohibition era 1920s, where
science and technology were growing so fast
it genuinely scared people. I often use things
like chemical history to improve the gameplay
setting.”—CRAIG BETTENHAUSEN

Credit: Charles M

10 C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | JUNE 18, 2018

 Dusty peacock
Jess Wade, a physicist at Imperial College
London, studies polymers and liquid
crystals used in display and light-emitting
diode technologies. This microscope image
(at 10x magnification) shows a polymer and
small chiral molecule blended in a film less
than 100 nm thick. When Wade warmed
the film up to a certain temperature called
the polymer’s glass transition temperature,
the chains became more flexible and,
where there were defects on the underlying
surface, started to form peacock-like
structures. The feathery structures “may
look great through a cross-polarized
microscope, but in reality, any aggregates
aren’t good for displays,” she says. By
studying these transitions in and out of the
liquid crystal state, Wade and her group
can understand how temperature and film
composition affects device performance.—
CRAIG BETTENHAUSEN

Credit: Jess Wade and Li Wan,

@jesswade, Department of Physics and
Centre for Plastic Electronics, Imperial
College London

Faux ice floes

Although they look like sheets of ice floating
on a polar sea, these white chunks of salts and
blue copper sulfate were the by-products of
a reaction run by Anthony Carroll, a graduate
student at the University of Wollongong.
Carroll had reacted xylose with acetone,
adding sulfuric acid and anhydrous copper
sulfate to speed up the reaction. After the
xylose and acetone formed his acetonide
product, Carrol neutralized the sulfuric
acid with a solution of ammonia in water
and vacuum filtered the mixture. These are
the leftover waste solids: The acid-base
neutralization created the white salts and the
copper sulfate turned blue when hydrated.—
MANNY MORONE

Submitted by Anthony Carroll

JUNE 18, 2018 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN 11

 Business Concentrates
FINANCE
China eyes cleantech, biotech stocks
Stock market conditions are favorable
for Chinese technology firms
Shares in the Chinese lithium-ion battery
maker Contemporary Amperex Technolo-
gy (CATL) surged 44% on their first day of
trading on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange
last week. The company’s performance
mirrors that of other cleantech and bio-
technology firms that listed in China and
Hong Kong over the past year.
CATL, already one of the world’s larg-
est producers of lithium-ion batteries,
raised the funds to finance its expansion
as demand for electric vehicles grows in
China, it said in a filing to the Shenzhen
exchange. The company picked a good
time for its initial public offering (IPO),
as the stock issue was priced at a healthy
23 times its annual earnings per share.
Other Chinese technology firms have
listed in China and Hong Kong in recent
months with comparable success. Pharma­
Block, a custom maker of chemicals used
in pharmaceutical research and produc-
CRISPR GOES BANANAS
U.K.-based start-up Tropic
Biosciences has raised
$10 million from agriculture and
biotechnology investors in its first round
of funding. The company is using CRISPR
and other gene-editing techniques to
develop traits for warm-region crops. Its
scientists hope to develop bananas that
can resist the devastating fungal pathogen
that causes Panama disease and hope
to alter the caffeine content in coffee.
12 C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | JUNE 18, 2018
tion, saw its shares hit their maximum
allowed price increase for 16 days in a row
after it listed in November 2017. The surg-
ing price of the stock turned one of the
company’s chauffeurs into a U.S.-dollar
millionaire, CEO Haijun Dong says.
WuXi AppTec listed in China recently
after delisting from the New York Stock
Exchange in 2015. In a 2016 C&EN inter-
view, founder Ge Li said he had been dis-
appointed that U.S. stock analysts misun-
derstood his company’s business. Chinese
investors gave WuXi the warmest welcome
by oversubscribing to its IPO by almost
5,000 times.
In a recent overview of regional stock
markets, KPMG predicts that technol-
ogy firms from China and beyond will
increasingly turn to Hong Kong for their
IPOs. The auditing firm notes that the
Stock Exchange of Hong Kong recent-
ly changed its rules to allow compa-
RARE DISEASE
CoA Therapeutics launches
BridgeBio Pharma is expanding its ros-
ter of laser-focused subsidiaries. Last
week, it launched CoA Therapeutics
to develop small-molecule drugs that
boost levels of an important biochemi-
cal called coenzyme A (CoA) in genetic
diseases where it is in short supply.
Also last week, BridgeBio launched
a company called Origin Bioscienc-
es, which licensed a compound from
Alexion Pharmaceuticals to treat an
ultrarare metabolic disease caused by a
specific kind of molybdenum cofactor
deficiency.
Founded in 2015, BridgeBio now has
19 subsidiary companies. “We’ve been
moving so fast that it has been difficult
to keep tabs on how many programs
morph into subsidiaries,” Shafique
Virani, CEO of CoA Therapeutics, says.
BridgeBio’s companies are all focused
on genetically defined cancer targets or
rare genetic diseases.
One such disease, pantothenate
Auspicious times
Several Chinese technology firms had
successful initial listings in the past year.
COMPANY BUSINESS AMOUNT RAISED
CATL Lithium-ion $850 million
batteries
PharmaBlock Custom drug $32 million
ingredients
Ping An Online health care $1.1 billion
Good Doctor services
WuXi Contract research $900 million
AppTec
WuXi Contract $500 million
Biologics manufacturing
Sources: Companies, media reports
nies that are not yet profitable to list.
The Chinese drug discovery firm Ascle-
tis, which is not profitable but has drug
candidates in late stages of the regulatory
approval process, recently announced it
has selected Hong Kong for its upcoming
IPO.—JEAN-FRANÇOIS TREMBLAY
kinase-associated neurodegeneration
(PKAN), is the focus of CoA Therapeu-
tics. A mutation in a gene called PANK2
prevents children from making enough
CoA in the brain, leading to involun-
tary muscle contractions and difficulty
speaking and swallowing. People with
PKAN often die as young adults.
Suzanne Jackowski and colleagues at
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
in Memphis developed allosteric activa-
tors of PANK3, a normally inactive pro-
tein that can increase CoA levels, much
like PANK2, once it is activated. “It is
like a backup system,” Jackowski says.
In a PKAN mouse model, the group
showed the compounds readily crossed
the blood-brain barrier and corrected
behaviors associated with the disease.
C R E D I T: S H UT T ERSTO C K
CoA Therapeutics has licensed and
further refined the St. Jude team’s
compounds. The company plans to test
the drug in people with PKAN by the
end of 2019.—RYAN CROSS

CONSUMER PRODUCTS
Ikea, Neste
advance
bioplastics
This fall, Ikea and the Finnish oil
company Neste will start commer-
cial-scale production of polypropyl-
ene and polyethylene made from
renewable feedstocks for use in Ikea
goods. Neste will supply the inputs,
which include vegetable oil and
waste cooking oil.
The two firms first partnered
in 2016 with the goal of producing
common plastics with renewable
raw materials rather than fossil
fuels. Ikea has vowed to change
all of the plastic used in its iconic
household goods to biobased or re-
cycled materials by 2030.
Neste primarily makes renewable
diesel from waste oil but in recent
years has been working to make
plastics from a leftover fraction of
the renewable oil.
To do so, Neste will send several
thousand tons of plant-based crude
oil to an unnamed plastics pro-
cessor, which will make batches of
plastic containing partially biobased
content. Ikea has targeted 20%
biobased content for certain prod-
uct lines including plastic storage
boxes. As the amount of available
feedstock increases, the firm says,
more products will follow.
While some products, such as
Coca-Cola’s green-capped soda bot-
tles, are made with cane-sugar-de-
rived polyethylene terephthalate,
the Ikea project will be the first to
produce renewable polypropylene.
C R E D I T: O CEA N CO N S E RVA N CY ( P LAST I C ) ; I KEA ( C H A I RS )
“Together with Neste, we are
ensuring that there is an opportu-
nity to scale up the production of
this material,” says Erik Ljungblad,
Ikea’s manager of plastic
products.—MELODY BOMGARDNER
POLLUTION
G7 leaders sign
plastics pledge
Ocean Plastics Charter seeks to rein in
the mounting problem of waste
Leaders at the G7 summit in Charlevoix,
Quebec, turned up the heat on the ocean
plastics issue by signing an agreement
meant to boost recycling and reduce sin-
gle-use plastics. The move was met with
skepticism from some environmentalists,
who are hungry for specific policies to
tackle the problem, and with accelerated
efforts from the plastics industry, which
increasingly finds itself on the defensive.
Five countries—Canada, France, Ger-
many, Italy, and the U.K.—as well as the
European Union signed the Ocean Plastics
Charter. The U.S. and Japan abstained.
The document calls for working with in-
dustry to make all plastics reusable, recy-
clable, or recoverable by 2030. Additional-
ly, the leaders want to recycle or reuse 55%
of plastic packaging by 2030 and recover
all plastics by 2040. They also want to sig-
nificantly reduce single-use plastics.
The agreement seeks to address marine
litter in “global hot spots” by helping such
places develop waste management infra-
structure. A lack of infrastructure makes
some developing countries—namely, Chi-
na, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand,
and Vietnam—the source of a majority of
the plastics that wind up in the sea.
Additionally, Canadian Prime Minis-
ter Justin Trudeau pledged $100 million
toward reducing marine litter and plastic
pollution.
“Plastics are one of the most revolu-
tionary inventions of the past century and
play an important role in our economy and
daily lives,” the charter says. “However, the
current approach to producing, using, man-
aging and disposing of plastics poses a sig-
Plastic pileups such
as this one on the
Hong Kong shoreline
are raising alarms.
nificant threat to the environment, to liveli-
hoods and potentially to human health.”
Ocean Conservancy, an environmental
group that has collaborated with industry,
says the G7 leaders demonstrated a “new
level of leadership” by signing the charter.
The environmental group Greenpeace
says the charter doesn’t go far enough.
“Voluntary charters focused on recycling
and repurposing will not solve the prob-
lem at the source,” Greenpeace Interna-
tional Executive Director Jennifer Morgan
said in a statement. “Governments must
move beyond voluntary agreements to leg-
islate binding reduction targets and bans
on single-use plastics.”
While the U.S. didn’t sign the docu-
ment, the American Chemistry Council,
a leading trade group, is reacting to the
mounting pressure on plastics. ACC CEO
Cal Dooley has delayed his retirement by
one year to the end of 2019 to lead the in-
dustry response to the plastic waste issue.
“While plastic products provide count-
less health, safety, lifestyle, and sustainabil-
ity benefits, those benefits cannot be fully
realized unless we take swift and aggressive
actions to ... dramatically increase rates of
reuse, recycling, and recovery,” Dooley says.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation,
which advocates for a circular economy,
says it will form a coalition of govern-
ments and businesses aimed at eliminating
plastic waste. It says the effort will build
on its New Plastics Economy initiative,
which involves consumer product com-
panies like Coca-Cola, Danone, and Pepsi,
as well as chemical makers such as BASF,
DuPont, and Novamont.—ALEX TULLO
JUNE 18, 2018 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN 13
 Business Concentrates
BIOFUELS
▸▸ BASF backs the
expanding LanzaTech
The venture capital arm of BASF has made
an undisclosed investment in LanzaTech,
the Chicago-based firm that uses gas-fer-
menting microbes to make ethanol and
other chemicals from industrial waste
emissions. A LanzaTech facility, with an
annual capacity of 58,000 L, is now pro-
ducing ethanol from emissions at the Jing-
tang steel mill in China’s Hebei province.
Meanwhile, steelmaker ArcelorMittal has
begun construction of a LanzaTech facility
at its site in Ghent, Belgium, which will be
able to produce up to 80,000 L per year of
the biofuel.—MELODY BOMGARDNER
ENERGY STORAGE
▸▸ Clariant partners with
hydrogen storage firm
Clariant will put its catalysis expertise to
work improving a hydrogen storage tech-
nology developed by the German start-up
Hydrogenious Technologies. The technol-
ogy uses Clariant’s
EleMax H catalyst
to bind the element
to liquid diben-
zyltoluene. The
hydrogen-bound
compound, which
like diesel can
be transported
easily, releases
One trailer contains its hydrogen with
enough hydrogen another catalyst,
to fill 350 cars. EleMax D. Clariant
says it will work
to broaden the efficiency of its catalysts,
thus enabling widespread use of renewable
hydrogen.—MARC REISCH
PETROCHEMICALS ▸▸ Indian castor bean
▸▸ PKN Orlen in massive program a success
Polish expansion Arkema and BASF, along with castor oil
Petrochemical maker and refiner PKN
Orlen will spend $2.3 billion, a record
amount for the Polish firm, to expand its
petrochemical capacity by 30% at its plants
in Płock and Włocławek, Poland, over the
14 C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | JUNE 18, 2018
RESEARCH FUNDING
Europe proposes big new
innovation program
The European Commission says Horizon 2020, its program to fund research
and innovation from 2014 to 2020, is a success. So much so that the EC wants
to up the ante for its next program. It is proposing a new program, Horizon
Europe, to fund research in the European Union from 2021 to 2027. The EC
wants to devote 100 billion euros (about $117 billion) to research through
Horizon Europe, up 25% from Horizon 2020. Making the case for Horizon
Europe, the EC points to achievements from the current program, such as
graphene-based supercapacitors from the Estonian company Skeleton and a
project by the Italian chemical companies Novamont and Matrica to turn this-
tle into biobased monomers for plastics and cosmetics.—MICHAEL MCCOY
next five years. The company says it will certificates
expand aromatic derivatives, phenol, and to 1,019
olefins. It will also invest in its R&D center. castor bean
Orlen says the expansion will help Poland farmers for
transition from being a net importer of
chemicals to a net exporter.—ALEX TULLO
sustainability improvements relating to
productivity, social impact, environment,
health, and safety. The nylon 11 precursor
11-aminoundecanoic acid is derived from
BIOLOGICS castor oil.—MELODY BOMGARDNER
▸▸ WuXi invests in
PHARMACEUTICALS
Massachusetts
▸▸ Cambrex expanding
Chinese contract manufacturer WuXi
Biologics is spending $60 million in
generics R&D in Italy
Worcester, Mass., to build a plant that will
produce biologics and employ as many as Cambrex will expand R&D capabilities for
150 people. With a total bioreactor capacity generic active pharmaceutical ingredients
of 4,500 L, the site will primarily employ (APIs) at its Paullo, Italy, facility. The
single-use bioreactors but will also im- project will add a 150-m2 laboratory space
plement a continuous process that WuXi as well as a research staff expansion. The
claims to have developed. WuXi has been company currently manufactures more
busily expanding commercial production than 70 generic APIs to the FDA’s current
in recent months with investments total- Good Manufacturing Practice quality
ing hundreds of millions of dollars in new standard. Generics account for approx-
plants in Ireland, Singapore, and China.— imately 20% of Cambrex’s sales. Earlier
JEAN-FRANÇOIS TREMBLAY this year the company invested $5 million
in an expansion of its laboratory facili-
ties in Karlskoga, Sweden, augmenting
BIOBASED CHEMICALS process development, handling of highly
potent substances, and crystallization
studies.—RICK MULLIN
C R E D I T: H YD RO GE N IO U S T ECH NO LO G I ES
BIOBASED CHEMICALS
firm Jayant Agro-Organics and the civil ▸▸ DuPont biosciences
society organization Solidaridad, have
wrapped up an initiative to put a sus-
headquarters debuts
tainable castor oil supply chain in place
in Gujarat, India. Project Pragati, named DuPont Industrial Biosciences has opened
for the Hindi word for progress, awarded its newly revitalized headquarters in
 therapy could be useful for many neuro-
degenerative conditions. Complement will
receive up to $17 million in milestone pay-
ments as it tests the compound in a Phase I
clinical trial. Alexion also has an option to
acquire Complement.—RYAN CROSS
VACCINES
Alzheimer’s treatment lanabecestat.
An early look at data from two trials
showed the drug was safe but unlikely
to slow down the cognitive decline in
people with early or mild forms of the
disease. In 2014, Lilly had agreed to pay
AstraZeneca up to $500 million to code-
velop lanabecestat, a small molecule that
blocks the activity of BACE, an enzyme

DuPont Industrial Wilmington,
Del. The facility,
Biosciences
headquarters housed in one of
the 50 buildings
at DuPont’s more than 100-year-old Ex-
perimental Station, supports business
teams and researchers whose labs include
high-throughput equipment as well as
bioinformatics and genomics capabilities.
Renovations were part of a $200 million
upgrade of the station first announced
in 2017.—MARC REISCH
NEUROSCIENCE
▸▸ Alexion partners with
Complement Pharma
Alexion Pharmaceuticals is teaming up
with Amsterdam-based Complement
Pharma to test its antibody that inhibits
an immune-system protein called C6,
which forms pores in cells, causing them
to lyse. C6 inhibition in animal models
for nerve injury, traumatic brain injury,
and Guillain-Barré syndrome suggests the
▸▸ Sanofi, Translate Bio
to make mRNA vaccines
Sanofi Pasteur is paying $45 million up
front to Lexington, Mass.-based Translate
Bio, formerly known as RaNA Therapeu-
tics, to develop messenger RNA (mRNA)
vaccines for up to five infectious diseases.
The vaccines could allow the body to use
its own protein-making machinery to de-
velop an immune response to the proteins
translated from the mRNA. Translate could
receive up to $760 million in additional
milestone payments. Sanofi also has an
ongoing partnership with BioNTech to de-
velop cancer immunotherapies based on a
similar mRNA technology.—RYAN CROSS
NEUROSCIENCE
▸▸ Lilly, AstraZeneca
drop BACE inhibitor
Eli Lilly & Co. and AstraZeneca are
shutting down Phase III studies of the
that snips down ­amyloid-β. Lanabecestat
adds to Lilly’s list of failed Alzheimer’s
treatments, which include the internally
developed BACE inhibitor LY2886721,
the γ-secretase inhibitor semagaces-
tat, and the anti-amyloid-β antibody
solanezumab.—LISA JARVIS
RESEARCH FUNDING
▸▸ Editas may give
Broad $125 million
The CRISPR gene-editing company Editas
Medicine has signed a sponsored research
agreement with Broad Institute of MIT
and Harvard. The deal stipulates that the
institute could receive up to $125 million
and Editas will have the first right to li-
cense Broad inventions arising from the
sponsored research. Editas currently owes
Broad two payments totaling $12.5 million.
The agreement comes after Broad scien-
tists Feng Zhang and David Liu, who are
also cofounders of Editas, launched three
new companies this year based on their
CRISPR inventions.—­RYAN CROSS

Business Roundup vestor and has been investing

heavily in chemicals.
coverage will provide most of
the funds.

▸▸ The European Com-
mission has conducted
unannounced inspections
of companies involved in
purchasing styrene, used to
make polymers and elasto-
mers. The EC is investigating
possible cartel and restric-
tive business practices.
▸▸ Haldor Topsoe, a fami-
ly-owned Danish chemical
process and catalyst firm,
is looking for an investor
to buy a minority stake in
the company. The investor
would have the option of
C R E D I T: D UP O N T
▸▸ Polystyvert, a Montre-
al-based start-up developing
a process that recycles poly-
styrene by dissolving it in a
solvent, has raised $11 million
in a financing round, largely
from local investors. The
company also has a collabo-
ration with French oil giant
Total.
▸▸ Siluria, a San Francis-
co-based start-up that has
developed a technology to
make ethylene via the oxida-
tive coupling of methane, has
signed a multiplant technolo-
▸▸ Dow Chemical says it will
build an alkoxylation facility
on the Gulf Coast by the end
of 2021 to support home and
personal care businesses. In-
eos recently announced a sim-
ilar plan. Separately, Dow says
it will nearly double glycol
ether capacity with a series of
projects around the globe.
▸▸ Daiichi Sankyo will pay up
to $358 million in compen-
sation to U.S. patients for
failing to warn them about
the possible gastrointestinal
illnesses that its blood pres-
▸▸ Pfizer will put $600 million
into its investment arm, Pfiz-
er Ventures. The venture fund
will devote roughly $150 mil-
lion of the fund to early-stage
companies focused on neu-
roscience, a therapeutic area
where in January Pfizer made
deep cuts.
▸▸ Juvenescence, an antiag-
ing drug company based on
the Isle of Man, has raised
$50 million in series A fi-
nancing. The firm has already
made investments in multiple
artificial intelligence and

floating its shares in an ini- gy license with Saudi Aramco. sure drug olmesartan—trade regenerative medicine compa-
tial public offering in five to The Saudi national oil com- name Benicar—can cause. nies, including Insilico Medi-
seven years. pany is already a Siluria in- The company’s insurance cine and LyGenesis.

JUNE 18, 2018 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN 15

 Policy Concentrates
INDUSTRIAL SAFETY
▸▸ Kulinowski to lead
Chemical Safety Board
Kristen Kulinowski will head the Chemi-
cal Safety Board as its “interim executive
authority” following the resignation of
chair Vanessa Allen Sutherland, according
to a CSB statement. The board will now
be down to three members, two short of
the number set by law. “I am committed
to ensuring that the CSB’s current inves-
tigations are completed in a timely and
efficient manner and that the lessons
learned are avail-
able to industry,
workers, and mem-
bers of the public,”
Kulinowski said.
The board current-
ly has 10 investiga-
tions under way. A
longtime American
Chemical Society
member, Kulinows-
Kulinowski ki was a research
staff member in the
Science & Technology Policy Institute of
the Institute for Defense Analyses before
being appointed to CSB in 2015. Earlier,
she spent 13 years at Rice University as ex-
ecutive director of the Center for Biologi-
cal & Environmental Nanotechnology and
director of the International Council on
Nanotechnology. At CSB, she has focused
her outreach efforts on laboratory safety
and safe practices for welding and other
“hot work” in the chemical industry. The
U.S. president nominates and the Senate
confirms CSB members and the chair.
President Donald J. Trump has twice pro-
posed eliminating CSB.—JEFF JOHNSON,
special to C&EN
C R E D I T: CBS ( KUL I NOWS KI ) ; @ EC _MI N I STE R /T W I T TE R ( N E U MAYR )
PEOPLE
▸▸ White House picks
environmental adviser
President Donald J. Trump nominat-
ed Mary Neumayr on June 12 for a key
environmental position in the White
House—chair of the Council on Envi-
ronmental Quality (CEQ). Neumayr has
been serving as the top official at CEQ
since joining as chief of staff in March
2017. Trump withdrew his first pick to
head CEQ, Kathleen Hartnett White, ear-
CHEMICAL REGULATION
Reporting required
for U.S. releases of
nonylphenol ethoxylates
Makers and users of a group of widely used nonionic surfactants found in
some cleaning products and paints will have to report U.S. releases of these
chemicals to EPA each year. The requirement applies to 13 nonylphenol
ethoxylates (NPEs), says an EPA regulation released June 7. Short-chain
NPEs are highly toxic to water-dwelling organisms, according to EPA.
Longer-chain NPEs aren’t as hazardous, but they can degrade in the envi-
ronment to short-chain NPEs and to nonylphenols, which are also highly
toxic to aquatic life
and suspected of
disrupting hormones. O
The regulation di- HO O
rects companies to
4-Nonylphenol diethoxylate
report their annual
quantities of NPE releases. That information will be made public under the
nation’s right-to-know law starting in 2020. NPEs are used in industrial
applications and consumer products as wetting agents, emulsifiers, sur-
factants, stabilizers, dispersants, and defoamers. EPA has not curtailed the
use of NPEs, but retailers are forging ahead. Walmart and Target have told
their suppliers to eliminate NPEs, among a handful of other substances,
from household and personal care products they sell.—CHERYL HOGUE
lier this year amid concerns and environment. She also
about her views on climate served as deputy counsel for
change and renewable energy. environment and nuclear pro-
White is an outspoken skeptic grams at the U.S. Department
of climate change. Neumayr is of Energy under the George
a much less controversial pick W. Bush administration and as
to lead CEQ and likely to win counsel to the assistant attor-
Senate confirmation. Before ney general for environment
joining CEQ, she spent nearly and natural resources at the
a decade on Capitol Hill in U.S. Department of Justice.
various positions with the Neumayr Neumayr received her J.D.
Energy & Commerce Com- from the University of Califor-
mittee in the House of Representatives, nia Hastings College of the Law.—BRITT
including deputy chief counsel, energy ERICKSON
BY THE NUMBERS
3 trillion
Metric tons of ice lost from the Antarctic ice sheet from 1992 to 2017, according
to an analysis in Nature (2018, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0179-y). This amount of ice
corresponds to an 8-mm rise in sea level.
JUNE 18, 2018 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN 17
 Features
POLYMERS
Stretching
out the slime fad
The kids’ chemistry activity
has become a big business
ALEXANDER H. TULLO, C&EN NEW YORK CITY
O
ver the past year, every parent,
guardian, educator—or anyone who
spends time around children—has no
doubt heard a lot about slime, a viscous
concoction made with household ingredients.
Dozens of slime recipes circulate the internet. A Google search
for “slime” nabs more than 117 million hits. A query on YouTube
yields more than 24 million results. Scores of these videos have
10 million-plus views.
Most of the slime recipes making the rounds have important
ingredients in common. They normally call for white glue, the
kind that children use in school to make Thanksgiving turkeys out
of construction paper. Many also use a solution made with borax
powder. Some call for alternatives such as contact lens solution
or Tide liquid laundry detergent, which also contain borax. The
substitutions come partially out of concern that children would
get skin irritation from handling undiluted borax powder. Kids will
add other ingredients such as baking soda, food coloring, shaving
cream, glitter—even iron filings so the slime responds to magnets.
These recipes are a variant of a decades-old chemistry demon-
stration: making slime from polyvinyl alcohol and borax (sodium
tetraborate decahydrate). Borate ions cross-link the hydroxyl
groups on the polyvinyl alcohol. The result is a shear-thickening
non-Newtonian fluid, a viscous substance that will flow like any
other fluid but break apart if yanked hard enough.
The mixtures that kids are making at home undergo a similar
transformation. The key ingredient in glue is polyvinyl acetate,
which has ester groups instead of hydroxyl groups. Additionally,
glue often contains some polyvinyl alcohol as a stabilizer.
John Fellenstein makes a lot of slime. He is a content specialist
at the Akron Global Polymer Academy, an outreach program sup-
ported by the University of Akron’s College of Polymer Science &
Polymer Engineering. He travels around Ohio conducting science
demonstrations at schools and special events.
Fellenstein orders five gallon jugs of glue every two or three
weeks. “Some schools that I know of have outlawed slime, so
my way of getting around that is that I don’t call it slime; I call it
cross-linked polymer putty,” he says, explaining that slime can get
messy. Slime caused such a sensation at one recent event—STEM
Day at the local minor league baseball affiliate, the Akron Rubber-
Ducks—that Fellenstein used up 4 jugs of glue in 40 minutes.
To Fellenstein, the chemical transformation that happens
when a kid mixes the ingredients together is a big part of slime’s
appeal. “If a kid has never done it before and they see that
change, that look they have when they pull the stick out and it is
covered in the putty—it is this look of wonderment,” he says.
18 C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | JUNE 18, 2018
The reporter’s
daughter
demonstrates slime
made out of glue,
contact lens solution,
food coloring, and
baking soda.
Audrey Bridgstock, assistant product development manager
for Pure Organic Ingredients, says slime aligns with the broader
trend of parents and children scouring Pinterest and other social
media sites for how-tos on activities such as making kinetic sand,
weaving rubber bands, and concocting homemade play dough.
Hobbies are Pure Organic’s bread and butter. The Utah-based
company buys high-purity chemicals in bulk and repackages them
for sale through online retailers to the do-it-yourself market. For
instance, it sells titanium dioxide for homemade sunscreen and
aluminum oxide for glass etching. “Slime is incredibly popular
right now, and borax has been one of our better-selling products
as a result,” Bridgstock says.
People buying glue by the gallon have been great for the school
glue trade, a business whose rush used to be the back-to-school
season. Michael B. Polk, CEO of Elmer’s owner Newell Brands,
boasted about slime when he spoke to Jim Cramer, host of
CNBC’s “Mad Money,” in May 2017, just as the fad was peaking.
“Every serving of slime uses a bottle of Elmer’s glue, so this was a
huge opportunity,” he said.
In a conference call with analysts around that time, Polk re-
ported that glue sales had climbed by 40%.
Seeking to capitalize on the craze, Elmer’s has come out with
slime-targeted products such as glue in glow-in-the-dark colors,
as well as a slime activator, probably containing borax. Other
firms that specialize in kids’ activities, such as Crayola and Cra-
Z-Art, also have full lines of slime-making materials. Craft stores
like Michaels and A.C. Moore have shelves devoted to the stuff.
In the conference call, Polk said he considers slime to be more
than a fad. “There is a surge in slime making that is going on
now,” he said. “But I think that this has a much longer half-life
C R E D I T: A LEX T UL LO/C & EN
than most of these types of activities.”
Polk may be right. According to Google Trends data, “slime”
still has 70% of the Google searches it did when it peaked last May.
Bridgstock agrees that slime should have legs. “Caregivers are
home with the kids and are aware of activities that are very edu-
cational and tactile,” she says. “All that created the perfect wave
for people to be interested in slime.” ◾
Periodic Graphics
A collaboration between C&EN and
More
online
To see more of
Brunning’s work, go to
compoundchem.com.
To see all of C&EN’s
Andy Brunning, author of the popular Periodic Graphics,
visit cenm.ag/
graphics blog Compound Interest periodicgraphics.

JUNE 18, 2018 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN 19

 Features
BUSINESS
Good times, bad times for industry
A strong economy is overshadowed by trade wars and plastics woes
MICHAEL MCCOY, C&EN NEW YORK CITY
T
he opening lines of Charles
Dickens’s “A Tale of Two Cit-
ies” have become a cliché; still,
sometimes the words ring true.
Many in the audience at the American
Chemistry Council’s recent annual meet-
ing could nod in agreement when Nariman
Behravesh, chief economist at the consult-
ing firm IHS Markit, began a keynote talk
by explaining the current economic situa-
tion with Dickens’s words: “It was the best
of times, it was the worst of times.”
Behravesh was describing a world with
a bright economic outlook but also a high
dose of uncertainty; much of that uncer-
tainty, he said, is being created by the
Trump administration.
That dichotomy is especially sharp for
the chemical companies that were at the
meeting, held from June 4 to 6 in Colorado
Springs. Thanks to the strong economy
and low-cost raw materials, the U.S.
chemical industry is doing great. Demand
is strong and investment is booming. But
Trump’s actions on trade and tariffs are
giving executives agita at a time when they
should be feeling good. Public dismay over
the impact of plastics on the environment
isn’t helping either.
In his talk, Behravesh criticized Trump
20 C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | JUNE 18, 2018
administration actions on immigration
and trade. For starters, he bemoaned the
impact of U.S. restrictions on H-1A and
H-2B visas for foreign workers, given that
IHS expects U.S. unemployment to soon
reach 3.5%, the lowest rate in 50 years.
“We’re scraping the bottom of the bar-
rel,” he said about U.S. employers. “We
need skilled workers; we need unskilled
workers.”
Behravesh also slammed what he sees
as the Trump administration’s misguid-
ed actions on trade. Playing on Trump’s
contention in a March 2 tweet that “trade
wars are good, and easy to win,” Behravesh
quipped that “trade wars are very bad, and
unwinnable.”
The administration’s planned 25% tariff
on $150 billion worth of Chinese imports
is basically a $40 billion tax on the Amer-
ican public, he said. That’s almost one-
third of the impact of Trump’s tax cut.
And Behravesh questioned the admin-
istration’s efforts to protect the U.S. steel
and aluminum industries with tariffs, in-
cluding ones against allies in Europe, Can-
ada, and Mexico. “What’s unfathomable to
me is why we are protecting old industries
and not doing enough to protect new
ones,” he said.
Chemical makers are
worried about the
impact of Trump’s
trade policies on
chemical exports.
IHS forecasts that the tariffs, if allowed
to go into full effect, will shave a few
tenths of a percent from U.S. economic
growth, which it forecasts will be 2.8%
this year. More insidious is the effect they
could have on industry supply chains and
on business sentiment in general.
Frustration over trade policy also
pervaded a press conference held by Cal
Dooley, the trade association’s CEO, and
three of its top officers: Bhavesh V. Patel,
CEO of LyondellBasell Industries; Mark
P. Vergnano, CEO of Chemours; and Jerry
MacCleary, the North American CEO of
the German firm Covestro.
A year ago at the same event, executives
avoided direct criticism of Trump’s eco-
nomic policies; this year they took off the
gloves.
Dooley did point out a number of ways
the industry is happy with the Trump
administration. For example, last year’s
corporate tax cut helped level the playing
field for U.S. companies in the global mar-
C R E D I T: S H UT T ERSTO C K
ketplace. And a “rebalancing” of certain
regulations that were enacted during the
Obama administration has removed oner-
ous provisions without compromising en-
vironmental protections, he said.
But on the subject of trade, Dooley and
the company executives were as unsparing providing local customers with customized
as Behravesh. Dooley pointed out that tar-
iffs like the ones Trump wants to impose
beget retaliatory tariffs. In fact, he added,
40% of the tariffs that China said it will
impose in response to the U.S. action tar-
get chemicals. “That wasn’t an accident,”
Dooley said. “Retaliation will always be
targeted at sectors of the economy that
have a global competitive advantage.”
The U.S. chemical industry had a
$33 billion trade surplus with the rest of
the world last year; in normal circum-
stances, the surplus would
reach $71 billion by 2023,
according to ACC. Aiding
“Trade wars
chemical exports should
be 325 investments valued
are very
at more than $194 billion
that firms have announced
bad, and
in the U.S. to take advan-
tage of low-cost raw mate-
unwinnable.”
rials extracted from shale —Nariman Behravesh, tions are market based.
oil and gas. chief economist, IHS Markit Bucking the traditional
But those projects were
predicated on free access to international
markets. “We’re building enormous capac-
ity in the U.S.,” Patel said of the industry,
“and to the extent that tariffs impede our
ability to do that, then that’s an issue.”
Industry executives acknowledged that
Trump has some legitimate gripes about
the trade practices of China and other
countries. But they want the administra-
tion to seek a negotiated resolution in
collaboration with its international allies.
“This is ultimately about job creation in
America,” Patel said.
The consulting firms trying to drum
up business at the ACC meeting took the
opportunity to advise attendees about
how to succeed in today’s high-growth,
high-anxiety environment.
Chris Cardinal, a director at Pricewater- announced that Dooley would stay on past
houseCoopers, talked about the challenge
of deglobalization—the retrenchment of
open borders and free trade as economic
nationalism rises. In this new environ-
ment, companies that once freely set up
international operations may now have to
cooperate more with local suppliers to get
their products to market, Cardinal said.
Likewise, sending technology devel-
oped in a central R&D center straight to
far-away countries doesn’t always work in
a deglobalizing world. “You need the re-
search center out in the market,” Cardinal
said. “You need to be local.”
Paul Bjacek, research lead for Accen-
ture’s chemical practice, talked about local- hired Martina McBride, a country music
ization as a third phase of Western indus-
trial evolution after deindustrialization and, forget politics for a while. By the end of
more recently, reindustrialization. Although the dinner, many normally staid executives
trade barriers are a reason to localize, so is
products. Bjacek pointed to the Speedfacto-
ries that Adidas has set up in Germany and
Atlanta to build personalized athletic shoes.
In addition to potential trade wars, ACC
executives were on high alert about plastic
waste, particularly waste in the marine
environment. More than one attendee
pointed to the sad images appearing in
magazines and on social media of sea ani-
mals that died after ingesting or becoming
entangled in plastic waste.
At an otherwise festive closing dinner,
Dooley acknowledged that
the issue of plastic waste is
“of concern to every man,
woman, and child.” And he
called solving the problem
“an imperative for our in-
dustry, a condition of our
license to operate.”
Some potential solu-
reluctance of polymer
producers to invest in recycling, Lyon-
dellBasell recently acquired the Dutch
recycler Quality Circular Polymers in
partnership with the waste management
firm Suez. Patel said the new owners are
looking to expand QCP to new locations
across Europe.
But other initiatives are necessary as
well, executives said. Steve Russell, ACC’s
vice president for plastics, pointed to the
association’s recently announced goal to
make all plastic packaging used in the U.S.
recyclable or recoverable by 2030 and all
of it actually reused, recycled, or recovered
by 2040.
Soon after the meeting, leaders at the
G7 summit in Canada signed a pledge to
reduce plastic waste. Two days later, ACC
his planned retirement to work on the
plastic waste issue (see page 13).
Between trade issues and plastics woes,
it was easy to forget that attendees were
enjoying some of their best economic
times in decades. In a briefing for C&EN,
Accenture’s Bjacek noted that profits for
the 57 firms he tracks are their highest in
more than 10 years. And at the closing din-
ner, Dooley pointed out that almost half
of all U.S. manufacturing investment last
year was made by the chemical industry.
In this spirit, meeting organizers es-
chewed the usual pundit or political vet-
eran as dinner entertainment and instead
singer. The goal, one official said, was to
were dancing between the tables. ◾
JUNE 18, 2018 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN 21
 Musings
Musings
Musingson
Social media 101 for scientists
It’s never too late to start getting connected online
Y
our children or younger col-
leagues have been gently prod-
ding you for years to join Face-
book, Twitter, Instagram, and
other social media platforms. They want
to stay in touch with you, and they want
you to participate in the fun. You’ve always
said, “I’ll join later,” if you haven’t scorned
virtual networking altogether.
Now, perhaps prompted by a job loss,
or a change in attitude, the time has come.
You’re staring at your computer screen
wondering where you should start. Will
joining social media help you, or will this
end up being a waste of time and effort?
I think social media is useful and can
offer returns far greater than you might
imagine.
If this is your initial for-
ay into social media, I
suggest starting with
a professional net-
working community
like LinkedIn. Most
of your colleagues
are probably already
using the network, and
they would be thrilled
to add you to their list of
connections.
Setting up your initial profile
might take a couple of hours at most,
and a lot of it can be accomplished by past-
ing your résumé into your profile. (Here’s
a great chance to update your résumé, if
you haven’t recently!) While that’s proba-
bly not how you want your profile to look
permanently, it’s always easier to change
things later. Also, don’t forget to add a pro-
fessional-looking photo of yourself.
Now people will be able to find you
quickly, learn about your remarkable
career, and get a sense of your interests.
Connecting with people (by inviting people
to connect or by accepting their invitations
to connect) seems like collecting people
as if they’re baseball cards, but I think of
LinkedIn as a Rolodex that can’t get lost or
soaked in coffee. Once you’ve connected
with someone on LinkedIn, finding people
22 C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | JUNE 18, 2018
Bench cubic
cubicee
Bench&&cubice
ononworking
workingininthe
thechemistry
the chemistryenterprise
chemistry enterprise
enterprise
BY CHEMJOBBER
Overwhelmed
by social media?
There’s help.
and their contact information
can be easy.
After LinkedIn, what next?
It’s up to you. These days,
there are so many different
places where you can express
yourself and your professional iden-
tity online. If you have always wanted
to practice writing, you might consider
starting a blog. Your blog will be slow to
attract readers, but that shouldn’t be your
end goal. Rather, your blog is a space to tell
the world about your career path and ex-
plore your thoughts about work.
If staying up late and writing about your
job doesn’t sound like fun, you could use
Instagram or Facebook to post (nonpro-
prietary) pictures of your work. Or you
could try my favorite social media platform:
Twitter. Twitter is a microblogging service
that allows you to broadcast short mes-
sages (280 characters), links, pictures, and
videos. I have thoroughly enjoyed getting
to know chemists all over the world, seeing
and hearing about their triumphs in the
laboratory, the different ways that people
learn chemistry, and the different barriers
(seen and unseen) that they have
surmounted. Despite what you
might imagine about Twitter,
I have found encour-
agement, humor, and
friendship on the plat-
form. For me, Twitter
has been endlessly
fun, engaging, and
useful for discuss-
ing ideas, sharing job
opportunities, and
staying in touch with
people.
The most important
aspect of social media is that
it needs to be something that
you enjoy and can sustain over a
long period of time. I have been blogging
since late 2008 and posting daily since the
fall of 2010. Of course, it’s partly about
“keeping the streak going,” but more im-
portant, I enjoy the online engagement
enough to keep doing it at a sustainable
pace. This has often led to valuable real-life
interactions at scientific conferences and
other meetings.
When I see advice for people who want
to get started in social media, it’s “you
need a Twitter account” or “you need
to be on Instagram!” I feel that’s wrong.
Rather, you need to find something that
you enjoy and that will allow you to build
community, help people whom you’d like
to help, and have fun. The adage “Do what
you love and it will never feel like work” is
too simplistic, but I think it’s true for so-
cial media. Find the social media platform
that suits your personality and that you
C R E D I T: YA N G H . KU/C& E N /S H UT TE RSTO CK
can navigate with ease. Do that, and the
journey will be a joy.
Chemjobber is an industrial chemist who
blogs about the chemistry job market at
chemjobber.blogspot.com. Find all his
columns for C&EN and suggest future topics
at cenm.ag/benchandcubicle.
Views expressed are those of the author and
not necessarily those of C&EN or ACS.
Cover story
W
hat could be easier than recycling?
Almost everywhere you go these
days, there’s a convenient bin for
your empty water bottle.
Yet plastic trash continues to accumulate in the
environment. A 2015 study in Science estimated that
the oceans may hold 155 million metric tons of plastic
by 2025, double the current amount (DOI: 10.1126/
science.1260352). Turns out those convenient recy-
cling bins aren’t always being used. Americans are
doing better than ever but still submit only about one-
third of their plastic waste for recycling.
An even more fundamental problem with plastics
RECYCLING
becomes apparent if you look past the recycling bin.
Only about 10% of plastic packaging worldwide—as
well as in the U.S.—ends up getting remade into a
new product, according to a 2016 World Economic
Forum report. Another 14% from around the globe is
burned, sometimes to generate energy. And the rest
ends up in a landfill or the environment.
And it stays there, preserved. Plastic’s durability is
one reason it has become so widely used. When it be-
NEEDS
comes trash, however, that durability is a curse. Most
plastics are made from fossil-fuel-derived polymers,
made of molecular chains that can reach thousands of
covalently bonded repeating units.
Of the plastic that does get recycled and reborn,
a majority of it ends up in a lower-quality product
because the most widespread, popular recycling
technology involves mechanically shredding, melting,
and re-forming plastics. “Polymers tend to degrade at
A REVAMP
high temperature,” says Megan Robertson, a chemi-
cal engineer at the University of Houston. “So we’re
essentially downgrading the material as it’s recycled.”
8% Downgraded
recycling
4% Process
losses
Chemical and biochemical 14% Recycling
approaches take aim at 2% Closed-loop
plastic pollution recycling
SAM LEMONICK, C&EN WEST COAST
98%
Virgin 78 million metric tons of plastic
feedstock (Annual global production)
C R E D I T: JES S E LE N Z
Sources: World Economic Forum; Ellen MacArthur Foundation
24 C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | JUNE 18, 2018
A mere 2% of the plastic that starts out in a drinking
water bottle will be recycled into a new plastic bottle.
The rest of the plastic that gets recycled typically ends
up as carpet fibers or outdoor furniture.
Other factors are exacerbating the plastic pollu-
tion problem, particularly in the U.S. China, which
has for decades collected and processed recyclable
waste from around the world, announced in 2017 that
it would limit imports of foreign trash. Now some
U.S. waste management facilities have to send recy-
clable plastic straight to the landfill because there’s
not enough domestic recycling capacity. Reflecting
a growing awareness of the plastic trash problem, in
May the American Chemistry Council announced its
goal that by 2040 all plastic packaging used in the U.S.
will be recycled or made into other products.
As the mountains of discarded plastic continue to
grow, science has begun to offer some solutions. Chem-
ists, including Robertson, are working on new chemical
methods to break down current plastics to their build-
ing blocks for reuse, and they’re designing new plastics
that could be easier to recycle (see page 26). Research-
ers are also working slowly toward biocatalyzed plastics
recycling, using microbes or enzymes to degrade poly-
mers. In the excitement about Mother Nature playing a
possible role in solving the plastics problem, however,
some news reports about plastic-munching critters
have oversold progress (see page 30).
Read on for a few visions of what the future of plas-
tics recycling might—or might not—look like.
Broken cycle
Eighty-six percent of plastic
packaging produced globally is
never collected for recycling,
according to a 2016 World
Economic Forum report. Another
4% is lost during the recycling
process, 8% is recycled into
lower-quality products like carpet
fiber or plastic lumber, and just
2% is recycled into equivalent
products.
14% Incineration and/or energy recovery
32% Environment
40% Landfill
JUNE 18, 2018 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN 25
POLLUTION

Chemical solutions for

a chemical problem
Researchers explore ways to convert plastics into valuable
products and to develop intrinsically recyclable polymers
SAM LEMONICK, C&EN WEST COAST

T
he world’s mounting plastic
trash crisis is hard to
solve because it has many
dimensions: social, technical,
and economic. But because chemistry
brought the problem into the world, it
doesn’t seem unreasonable to look to
chemistry for a solution.
Such a solution will require that today’s chemists
figure out how to undo the hard work of their prede-
cessors. The polymers we use as plastics were de-
signed to be durable and stable. They’re difficult to
break down on purpose.
Now, as the need for finding better ways to han-
dle plastic waste grows, some researchers are finding
ways to take plastics apart. Several companies have
started up in the past decade to capitalize on these
processes. Some methods return plastics to their
monomeric form in the hope that the re-
claimed building blocks might replace fossil
fuels as the feedstock for new materials.
Other processes yield fuels or additives
for other products.
Developing new recycling meth-
ods is especially important as

CR E D I T: J ES S E LE N Z
the kinds of polymers we use
have started to change. A
growing number of prod-
ucts and applications, such
as cars and wind tur-
bines, are relying on the
strength of composite
materials made with
fiberglass and carbon
fiber. These mate-
rials use polymer
resins that cannot
simply be melted
and re-formed
like other plastics,
and chemists are
just starting to develop

26 C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | JUNE 18, 2018

 methods for recycling them in re-
search labs.
But other researchers are think-
ing about recycling as they develop
new materials that might not be
as difficult to deal with as today’s
plastics. These projects could yield
Key:
resins and plastics that are intrin-
sically easy to recycle.
With such developments, it’s
conceivable that, one day, chem-
ists might deliver a plastic bottle
that can be reincarnated infinitely.
Trash to treasure
All plastics are not equal when
it comes to recycling. Polyethylene
polymers are the easy-to-handle
favorites. Poly(ethylene tere-
phthalate) (PET) and high-density
polyethylene are the most com-
monly recycled plastics in the U.S.
Products made with these plastics
are stamped with a recycling sym-
bol encircling the numbers “1” and
“2,” respectively. When embla-
zoned with these numbers, called
resin identification codes (RICs),
plastics can be shredded, cleaned,
and remade into new bottles or
lower-quality materials like carpet
fiber.
On the other end of the scale,
many curbside recycling programs
don’t even accept polystyrene (RIC
6), used in food packaging, packing
peanuts, and disposable cutlery.
Like polyethylene plastics, polysty-
rene waste can be processed and
reused to make new products. It
just doesn’t happen often.
“Plastic foam is troublesome for
most material recovery facilities in
the country,” says Chris Faulkner,
C R E D I T: A DA PT ED F RO M P ER I O D IC G RA P H I CS /A N DY BRUN N I N G FO R C& E N
U.S. recycling status temperature, and pressure of the
While existing methods can recycle some pyrolysis process.
polymers, like poly(ethylene terephthalate), at Pyrolysis can address the poly-
relatively high rates, new technology is needed for styrene contaminant problem.
other types. Faulkner says that because the
desired products vaporize as the
polymer breaks down, the valuable
Mass-produced Percentage recycled
compounds can be separated from
Poly(ethylene terephthalate) some of the dyes, processing aids,
pesticides, and food contaminants
4.5 billion kg 19.5% during the reaction. Later separa-
O O tion steps are still needed, though,
1 he says.
O O Agilyx started out with a more
PET generalized process for turn-
n
ing plastic waste into valuable
High-density polyethylene products. In 2004, then called
Plas2Fuel, the company built reac-
5.5 billion kg 10.3% tors to convert mixed plastic waste
into a mixed hydrocarbon product
2 called Agilyx Synthetic Crude Oil.
HDPE This mixture can be refined like
n
natural crude oil. Agilyx had built
and sold several of these systems
Poly(vinyl chloride) to waste management companies
0.9 billion kg 0.0% across the country before the price
of oil dropped in 2015, making the
Cl crude alternative less competi-
3
tive with what comes out of the
PVC n ground. That’s when the company
started getting its polystyrene re-
cycling plant on-line. But Faulkner
Low-density polyethylene says with oil prices climbing again
7.4 billion kg 5.3% and China limiting how much
plastic waste it will accept from
4 the U.S. and other countries, Agi-
lyx is seeing renewed interest in
LDPE n
its oil production process.
Other companies are hoping to
Polypropylene turn waste plastics into valuable
7.2 billion kg 0.6% chemical products or feedstocks. A
lot of the attention has focused on
5 polyethylene.
GreenMantra Technologies
PP n in Brantford, Ontario, employs a

vice president of technology and thermocatalytic process to turn

project management at Agilyx,
which has developed a chemical
process to recycle polystyrene.
A big challenge in recycling
polystyrene is contamination. Ac-
tually, it’s a problem for all plastics
recycling; if oily molecules, water,
and other contaminants make it
into recycled materials, the sub-
stances can disrupt and weaken
the polymers. Polystyrene clam-
shell containers and coffee cups
are especially likely to be dirty, adding to
the cost of processing them for recycling.
Agilyx uses pyrolysis to break down
polystyrene at its Tigard, Ore., facility,
heating it in an oxygen-deprived envi-
ronment so the plastics don’t burn. The
Polystyrene
2.2 billion kg 0.9%
6 products haven’t typically come
PS
n
Note: These data, from EPA, are for the U.S. in 2012 and were
published in 2014.
company can revert polystyrene back to
monomeric styrene, toluene, and ethyl-
benzene, which is a precursor to styrene.
Faulkner wouldn’t share the exact details
of Agilyx’s process but says it can select
for different products by tuning the time,
plastic into waxes for asphalt
roads and roofs, as well as addi-
tives for plastics, adhesives, and
coatings. Domenic Di Mondo,
vice president of technology and
business development, says those
from recycled materials. “We’re
driving a circular economy and in
most cases creating products with
even higher value than the virgin
starting material,” he says.
When the company started in 2010, its
first target was polyethylene. GreenMan-
tra uses a heterogeneous thermocatalytic
process to turn the plastic into different
specialty chemical products. Di Mondo says
the process requires lower temperatures

JUNE 18, 2018 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN 27

than pyrolysis and gives the company a high ty that the polymers alone don’t have. mostly undamaged by the process (Green
degree of control over what gets produced. The makers of cars, planes, and wind Chem. 2017, DOI: 10.1039/c7gc01737e).
Di Mondo wouldn’t specify what catalysts turbine blades rely on these composite Although Zhang says he has licensed
GreenMantra uses, but patent documents materials because of their high strength- some of his technology to a Chinese com-
related to the polyethylene process de- to-weight ratio. Unlike plastic bottles, pany and has had interest from others,
scribe it as using an iron- and copper-based these products don’t get thrown away these methods are a long way from com-
catalyst. Di Mondo says that because the every day. But when their lifetimes do end, mercial applications. As a result, Zhang
method uses a solid catalyst and no sol- a lot of thermoset-polymer-based compos- and others are working on a possibly easi-
vents and has a small physical footprint, the ites get sent to landfills. er path to recycling thermosets: designing
process can be easily scaled up. “We really have no way of dealing with new polymers with recycling in mind.
The company now processes polyeth- those polymers,” says Megan Robertson, Such research could save the chemists a
ylene and polypropyl-
ene at its Brantford
facility, and it plans
to open a polystyrene O O
pilot plant in 2019. But B B B B
it hasn’t targeted all O O O O
B + HO B + HO
types of plastic. Chlo- B B
rine in poly(vinyl chlo-
ride) poses too many OH OH
health and environ-
mental risks for most
recyclers, even the
ones using mechanical
recycling, and Di Mondo says GreenMantra Boroxine rings can break and easily re-form throughout this thermoset, enabling it to be
has not focused on PET because existing reshaped (shown). With boiling water, the thermoset can even revert to its monomers.
recycling processes are sufficient to keep
large amounts of it out of the landfill. a chemical engineer at the University of lot of trouble trying to break down the ma-
Houston. terials when they’re thrown away.
Jinwen Zhang, a polymer scientist at To create these new recycling-ready
The trouble with Washington State University, is one per- materials, Zhang has zeroed in on the
thermosets son trying to change that. He’s developed source of thermoset stability—the cross-
Another class of polymers called ther- mild catalytic processes to break down es- linkers. The materials he’s making are
mosets presents a unique set of recycling ter linkages in amine-cured epoxy resins, a known as vitrimers, a subset of thermo-
challenges. Unlike thermoplastics, such as type of thermoset that is common in com- sets with cross-linking bonds that form
polyethylene, polystyrene, and polypropyl- posite materials. Zhang showed he could and break depending on temperature. In
ene that can be melted and molded into dissolve resin in carbon-fiber scraps from a way, they act like a glass, malleable at
new forms, thermoset polymers harden a major aircraft maker using a ZnCl2-etha- high temperatures and hardening when
irreversibly thanks to covalent cross-linkers nol catalyst at 250 ºC. His group recovered they cool. If manufacturers used such vit-
that bridge polymer strands. These poly- carbon fibers and un-cross-linked oligo- rimers as resins in composite materials,
mers are increasingly used as resins and mers from the resin. A scanning electron the resulting products could be recycled
combined with carbon fiber or other mate- microscope showed that the fibers were through mechanical processes similar to
rials to achieve tensile strength and elastici- still smooth, indicating that they were those used for thermoplastics.
OH
O O Polymers like the vitrimer
shown could be used
as recyclable resins in
OH CH3 composite materials.
O When heated at 12 atm
O O + OH
O HO OH with ethanol and zinc
O catalyst left over from the
O O
O + Residual zinc
O polymerization process,
O this particular vitrimer
CH3 breaks down at its ester
linkages, making it
recycling ready.
12 atm 1 atm
160 °C 190 °C
CH3
O
OH O OH OH
HO O
HO OH
O O O
O
O
O O O
O
CH3

28 C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | JUNE 18, 2018

 Zhang developed a vitrimer based on or so-called self-immolative, polymers to plastics on the market right now (Science
eugenol, a renewable phenylpropene found develop new thermoplastics. Pioneered 2018, DOI: 10.1126/science.aar5498).
in nutmeg, cinnamon, and other plants by chemist Doron Shabat of Tel Aviv Uni- Chen has long focused on ring-open-
(Macromolecules 2017, DOI: 10.1021/acs.mac- versity, self-immolative polymers are in- ing reactions to synthesize polymers.
romol.7b01889). When heated with ethanol herently unstable but have an endcap that “Ring-opening polymerization is a highly
and some zinc catalyst left over from the prevents their depolymerization. When effective way of making high-molecu-
polymerization process, the vitrimer breaks triggered by light or a specific chemical, lar-weight polymers in a short period of
down at its ester linkages. Zhang says he’s the endcap releases and triggers depo- time,” he says. He recently reported po-
also experimented with lignin, which can be lymerization. “Self-immolative polymers lymerization of a strained, two-ring mono-
extracted from plants, as a vitrimer. embody that ideal notion of how we could mer called 3,4-T6GBL into either a linear
University of Houston’s Robertson has potentially recycle plastics,” says Eliza- or cyclic polymer, depending on the metal
also developed recyclable thermosets by beth Gillies, a chemist at the University of catalyst used. Using heat and a ZnCl2
finding renewable chemicals to replace Western Ontario. catalyst, Chen and his team can return
some or all of bisphenol A (BPA), which is Gillies developed an ethyl glyoxylate the polymer to 3,4-T6GBL, a process they
used as an epoxy precursor in many resins. polymer that reverts to its monomer, ethyl think can be repeated infinitely.
The BPA alternatives she’s identified in- glyoxylate, when the polymer’s endcap is “The design of the monomer is the key
clude epoxidized soybean oil, salicylic acid, removed via light, hydrogen peroxide, or for developing chemically recyclable poly-
and other plant derivatives. Rob-
ertson says key features she looks O
for in these biobased molecules O
n Lanthanum catalyst Yttrium or zinc catalyst
are convenient functional groups
for conversion to epoxides and O O O
aromatic rings to provide strength, O
mimicking the chemical structure
O O
O n
of BPA (ACS Sustainable Chem. O
Eng. 2016, DOI: 10.1021/acssusche- ZnCl2, heat ZnCl2, heat
meng.6b01343). Because many of
3,4-T6GBL
O
these molecules contain esters, O
Robertson says, chemical recycling
methods under development for Eugene Y.-X. Chen of Colorado State University calls this polymer, in its linear (right)
polyesters could be applied to her or cyclical (left) form, infinitely recyclable, capable of repeatedly breaking down to its
thermoset polymers. monomer (center).
A research group at the Universi-
ty of California, Irvine, led by Zhibin Guan mild acid (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2014, DOI: mers with high depolymerization selectivity
has turned to boroxine rings to produce re- 10.1021/ja504727u). In theory, that’s an ideal and useful materials properties,” he says.
cyclable thermosets (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2018, system for a recyclable polymer. In reality, Ensuring that its core structure can be
DOI: 10.1021/jacs.8b03257). These rings she says, the current versions of these poly- chemically recycled is the first step, accord-
form through reversible reactions between mers can’t compete with the properties or ing to Chen. Then adding functional groups
boronic acid groups on the monomers, a cost of PET and other commercial plastics. can achieve desirable physical properties.
property that also allows the thermoset Scott Phillips, a chemist at Boise State One of Chen’s former postdocs, Miao
to be reshaped and re-formed. In boiling University, has designed self-immolative Hong, now developing her own recyclable
water, the polymer breaks down to its polymers with responsive endcaps, in- polymers at the Shanghai Institute of Or-
monomers. cluding phenoxides and alkoxides (Green ganic Chemistry, says chemically recyclable
Researchers at IBM are also interested Chem. 2015, DOI: 10.1039/c5gc01090j). polymers are the best solution to the prob-
in chemically recyclable thermoset poly- When these molecules get cleaved off the lem of plastic trash. Such materials could
mers because computers use the materials polymer, they liberate two electrons that not only make possible the infinitely recy-
in many ways, including as insulators for then cascade down the polymer, selective- clable plastic bottle but also avoid issues
electronics and in the cases that house ly breaking off monomers. of quality loss, seen with mechanical recy-
them. Jeannette Garcia, a chemist at IBM, But not all recyclable thermoplastics cling, and the inability to recover valuable
created poly(hexahydrotriazine), which can need to rely on self-immolation. Eugene products from biodegradable polymers.
be converted back into its monomer with Y.-X. Chen, a chemist at Colorado State Still, intrinsically recyclable plastics
an acid catalyst that selectively hydrolyzes University, recently described a fully recy- are a long way from commercial reality.
the hexahydrotriazine linkers (Science 2014, clable polymer with properties on par with Besides technical hurdles, there are also
DOI: 10.1126/science.1251484). economic ones. For manufac-
turers, it’s usually easier to
O O H O HO OH use a tried-and-true material
Rethinking n UV light H2O than a brand-new one, Garcia
thermoplastics O O Depolymerization O O O O says. Although the barrier
Thermoset polymers to adoption is high, it isn’t
aren’t the only materials insurmountable. So she and
that chemists are designing = UV-responsive endcap other chemists continue to
to be easily recycled. Some work on chemical solutions
researchers have turned to Two-electron reactions can degrade self-immolative polymers to the rapidly growing prob-
the field of self-destructive, linearly when a trigger removes the endcap. lem of plastic trash.

JUNE 18, 2018 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN 29

SUSTAINABILITY
The truth about plastic eaters
Headlines about plastic-munching microbes and worms
belie tough, competitive road to recycling processes
CARMEN DRAHL, C&EN WASHINGTON
“C
ould Nature Rid the Planet of Its Plastic Waste?” Over the past few
years, worms, bacteria, and enzymes that chow down on polymers
have inspired headlines somewhat like this one. The idea that biology
may succeed where humans have so far failed is tantalizing.
Except dealing with the staggering amount of
plastic waste polluting the earth is more complicat-
ed than some coverage has let on. Most reported
cases of an enzyme or critter degrading plastic are
incomplete and slow. Making these processes faster
and more efficient is not trivial. And even if scien-
tists manage to improve polymer biodegradation
technologies, they must also bring down the cost
to compete in a marketplace that includes chemical
recycling methods (see page 26) and virgin mono-
mers—brand-new materials that have never been
polymerized.
Media circus notwithstanding, biodepolymer-
ization research is slowly moving forward, and an
enzyme-based process to break down one common
plastic is making gradual advances to market, which
suggests biocatalysis could someday make up a share
of—although certainly not the entire—recycling
landscape.
Knowing some polymer chemistry can help put
glowing headlines in context. Breaking apart poly-
esters such as poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET),
which was the subject of some studies that made
headlines, is relatively easy because these plastics
contain the ester bonds that enzymes already degrade
in nature. But plastics with an all-carbon backbone,
such as the polyethylene in shopping bags or the
polystyrene in carryout food containers, are more
challenging. News about breaking down those kinds of
plastics tends to be greeted with more excitement, but
it also merits more skepticism.
In addition, the more neatly a polymer’s molecular
chains are arranged, which is measured by a property
called crystallinity, the harder they are for enzymes
and organisms to break down. Polymers are never
100% crystalline, but some plastics are more crystal-
line than others. For instance, some studies reported
breakdown of flexible PET films, but these films tend
to have lower crystallinity, and tend to be easier to
chomp on, than plastic bottles.
The very hungry grubs
When an organism appears to be eating plastic, sci-
entists and reporters should look for evidence that the
30 C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | JUNE 18, 2018
critter is biochemically degrading the polymer rather
than simply shredding it. The gold-standard test for
confirming the fate of plastic in an organism involves
feeding isotopically labeled plastic to animals of in-
terest and tracking whether the labels appear later in
monomers or other compounds. Scientists who don’t
see this test in a new study are likely to ask for it and to
ask more questions.
In 2017, biologist Federica Bertocchini at the In-
stitute of Biomedicine & Biotechnology of Cantabria
reported that wax worm caterpillars could break
down polyethylene. After their initial observation,
they exposed a paste made from mashed-up cat-
erpillars to a sample of polyethylene film, which
generated new peaks during a scan with an infrared
spectrometer. Bertocchini and her team attributed
the peaks to a breakdown product, ethylene glycol,
likely generated by a caterpillar enzyme or an enzyme
in its gut microbes (Curr. Biol. 2017, DOI: 10.1016/j.
cub.2017.02.060). Many outlets, including C&EN, cov-
ered the work.
Four months later, however, Till Opatz and his
coworkers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
published a report disputing the findings (Curr. Biol.
2017, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.07.004). Bertocchini’s
infrared spectra lacked characteristic peaks for eth-
ylene glycol, Opatz argues. He suspected that instead
of coming from ethylene glycol, the spectral peaks
came from ground-up caterpillar proteins that stuck
to the polyethylene film after washing. So his team
smeared ground pork, which would also contain pro-
teins, on polyethylene film and obtained a spectrum
that Opatz says matched Bertocchini’s. This con-
clusion doesn’t rule out that caterpillars are capable
of biodegrading plastic, but it is a simpler explana-
tion for what Bertocchini’s team observed, Opatz
contends.
Bertocchini stands by her work (Curr. Biol. 2017,
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.07.005). “We do need to better
check what the by-products of this degradation are,”
she says. Funding challenges in Spain have delayed
follow-up studies, but her team plans to begin experi-
ments soon.
Some studies do use the gold standard of isotopic
labeling to make conclusions about plastic eaters,

but scientists may point out other lim-
itations. Jun Yang of Beihang University
and his team conducted isotope-labeling
studies to determine that a gut bacterium
from mealworms consumes polysty-
rene (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2015, DOI:
10.1021/acs.est.5b02661 and 10.1021/acs.
est.5b02663). Work with collaborators
such as Wei-Min Wu at Stanford Univer-
sity suggests that the organisms convert
about half the polystyrene carbon they
ingest to CO2 rather than to styrene
monomers.
But the rest of the products—
monomers or otherwise—haven’t
been identified. And the bacteria
C R E D I T: S PA N I S H N AT IO N A L R ES EA RC H CO U N C IL
don’t completely digest their plastic
meals, even after several
weeks. Disordered
“There appears to amorphous
region
be some utilization of
polystyrene carbon, but I would still like
others to reproduce the results,” says
Ramani Narayan, a specialist in biodegrad-
able polymer systems at Michigan State
University.
Yang’s team has also reported that
Indian meal moth larvae and bacteria
within those larvae degrade polyethylene
(Environ. Sci. Technol. 2014, DOI: 10.1021/
es504038a). But as with Bertocchini’s
caterpillar study, no isotope-labeling
work was performed. Yang contends it’s
possible to confirm biochemical poly-
crystalline methods are indirect, and
The more orderly the arrangement of
polymer chains, the more crystalline the
polymer is said to be, and the harder it is
to break down with microbes or enzymes.
These polyethylene-
eating caterpillars
launched a media
feeding frenzy,
but it’s not certain
they biochemically
degrade the plastic.
ethylene breakdown with other tech-
niques, including mass measurements,
gel permeation chromatography, and
infrared and nuclear magnetic resonance
spectroscopy.
Opatz disagrees because contamination
could look like degradation products in
some of those techniques.
Ordered Narayan notes that those
region any degradation spotted by
them could be attributable
to degradation that wasn’t performed
by the organism. Moreover, Narayan
argues, it’s not enough to show
that organisms are biochemically
breaking down polymers. Without
demonstrating complete degradation,
whether to CO2 or recovered mono-
mers, there’s a chance that leftover
plastic fragments could wreak havoc
on the environment. Microplastics can
harm aquatic life that mistakes them for
food and transport pollution into the food
chain.
It remains to be seen whether enzymes
isolated from Yang’s microbes can con-
sume plastic quickly and completely. Yang
and his team have sequenced the genome
JUNE 18, 2018 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN 31
of one of the polyeth- This microbe contains PETase National Renewable
ylene-munching bacte- and MHETase, two enzymes that O O Energy Laboratory,
rial strains they iden- depolymerize PET to its monomers PET H. Lee Woodcock
tified (J. Biotechnol. (scheme shown). O O of the University of
n
2015, DOI: 10.1016/j. H O PETase South Florida, and
300 nm 2
jbiotec.2015.02.034), their colleagues en-
and Yang says work is countered a pleasant
under way to identify O O surprise when solving
relevant enzymes and HO MHET their structure (Proc.
to produce greater O OH Natl. Acad. Sci. USA
quantities of them. H2O MHETase 2018, DOI: 10.1073/
pnas.1718804115).
They set out to deter-
Proteins O O mine how the PET-de-
attacking Ideonella sakaiensis OH + grading enzyme
HO HO OH
plastic evolved, and in the
Ethylene glycol process, they acciden-
Terephthalic acid
Any enzyme that tally made a mutant
can break up plastic enzyme that could
will be judged by whether it can degrade 02255-z; Nat. Commun. 2018, DOI: 10.1038/ erode more-highly-crystalline PET than
real-world plastic waste and do so ef- s41467-018-02881-1; Biophys. J. 2018, DOI: before. Beckham says the current version
ficiently. In 2016, researchers in Japan 10.1016/j.bpj.2018.02.005; ChemBioChem of the enzyme would still take months to
tested sludge from a recycling plant and 2018, DOI: 10.1002/cbic.201800097). But break down a soft-drink bottle. “We’re do-
uncovered a microbe that could complete- John E. McGeehan of the University of ing a lot of protein engineering to improve
ly break down films of PET to CO2 and Portsmouth, Gregg T. Beckham of the the activity further,” McGeehan says.
H2O, a feat that was a step above partial
degradations reported previously. From
that microbe, the scientists plucked two
enzymes that degraded PET to its mono-
Are microbes evolving to eat plastic?
mers of terephthalic acid and ethylene Some bacteria can degrade plastic, which might be nature’s way of adapting to
glycol (Science 2016, DOI: 10.1126/science. a new food source or just coincidence. We asked sources to weigh in.
aad6359).
Some headlines claimed the microbe
could help with recycling, but breakdown “I hope so, but we would definitely need to
took six weeks on a small plastic sample,
too slow for immediate applications. Yang, control them!”
who wasn’t involved with the work, point- —Federica Bertocchini, Institute of Biomedicine & Biotechnology of
ed out another caveat of the study in a Cantabria
technical comment in Science: The team in
Japan worked with low-crystallinity PET “It would only be natural that microbes
film, which worked better for screening
purposes but is relatively easy to degrade have and will continue to evolve to
compared with the higher-crystallinity
PET in water bottles and other common consume plastics, since they are
products (2016, DOI: 10.1126/science.
aaf8305).
increasingly abundant in nature.”
Kohei Oda of Kyoto Institute of Tech- —Richard Gross, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
nology, who co-led the original study,
says his colleagues set out to screen for
microbes that could use PET as a nutrient
“Whether they’d evolve where there
for growth, regardless of crystallinity (Sci-
ence 2016, DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf8625).
are other things to eat besides
Optimizing enzymes can always come plastic is questionable.”
later, he contends. He thinks some news
outlets exaggerated the immediate impact
—Emily Flashman, University of Oxford
of the work, and as a result, he and his
coworkers now monitor coverage “very “This has not yet been demonstrated.”
C R E D I T: S CI E NC E ( M I CRO BE )

carefully.” —Wolfgang Zimmermann, Leipzig University

Multiple groups have since solved
the X-ray crystal structure of one of the
Japanese team’s enzymes, which con-
“We need more examples to
verts PET to an intermediate called mo-
no-(2-hydroxyethyl) terephthalic acid (Nat.
answer this question.”
Commun. 2017, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017- —Kohei Oda, Kyoto Institute of Technology

32 C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | JUNE 18, 2018

 Optimization game
Richard A. Gross has been doing that
kind of engineering since 2011. His group
at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute works
with cutinases, so named because they
degrade cutin, a waxy coating on plants.
Many of these enzymes also degrade PET,
which, like cutin, is a polyester.
Gross says teams will want to maximize
enzyme binding affinity for PET. To boost
activity, they’ll also have to make sure the
enzyme is stable at or above PET’s glass
transition temperature of 75 °C. At the
glass transition temperature, polymer
chains have higher mobility, which you
can think of as having more elbow room,
Gross explains, improving an enzyme’s
access to the bonds it breaks. And finally,
adjustments should be made to block
enzyme aggregation, which can reduce
performance. Gross’s team showed earlier
this year that strategically placed carbo-
hydrate groups largely prevent cutinases
from aggregating (Biochemistry 2018, DOI:
10.1021/acs.biochem.7b01189).
Weighing in on McGeehan and Beck-
ham’s work, Emily Flashman, a specialist
in enzyme mechanisms at the University
of Oxford, adds that to be successful, any
biorecycling process must find a produc-
tive way to harvest and reuse monomer
products. McGeehan says he and his
collaborators are “keen to develop” a
monomer isolation process, and they are
also working to make the enzyme stable at
higher temperatures.
The elephant in the room
C R E D I T: H . L E E WOO D CO C K/ UN I V E RS I TY O F S O UT H FLO R I DA ( MO D E L) ; CAR B I O S (R EACTO R )
Even if optimization goes swimmingly,
Woodcock and colleagues developed a
computational model to show how PET
(gray and red) docks inside their mutant
PET-degrading enzyme (space fill).
there’s still the matter of cost. Engineered
enzymes tend to be more expensive than
commodity chemicals, and scaling up a
biotechnological process takes yet more
investment. “We already have mature,
scalable, cost-effective technologies to re-
cycle PET,” such as metal-catalyzed depo-
lymerizations, Narayan says. What’s more,
it’s tough to compete with the low price of
virgin monomers, he adds. “Nobody wants
to face that reality.”
Wolfgang Zimmermann, an expert in
biocatalysis for plastics recycling at Leipzig
University, is more optimistic. “The plas-
tics manufacturing industry hasn’t been
conscious of the waste problem, and this is
changing now,” he says. Changing attitudes
and changing demands from consumers
could tip the balance in favor of recycling
methods that use biocatalysts rather than
chemical catalysts, if costs can be some-
what competitive, he adds.
The researchers at Carbios aim to
capitalize on that sentiment. The French
firm says it has optimized an enzyme
In a 5-L reactor at
Carbios, enzymes
depolymerize a
solution of PET.
that depolymerizes 97% of PET starting
materials into monomers in 24 hours.
“There’s a real gap between what’s been
published in the press and what we do,”
says spokesperson Benjamin Audebert,
referring to news reports about studies
in the academic literature. Before expos-
ing PET to its enzyme, Carbios uses a
proprietary pretreatment that converts
crystalline PET to an amorphous form,
facilitating breakdown. Audebert declined
to disclose the enzyme Carbios uses, but
a company patent mentions bacterial
and fungal cutinase and lipase enzymes.
Earlier this year, Carbios started scaling
up its process to enable treatment of up
to 200 kg of PET waste in 24 hours. By
year’s end, the goal is to produce a new
plastic product, such as a bottle, from re-
covered monomers and to test the result-
ing product with corporate partners such
as L’Oréal, Audebert says. A 10,000-met-
ric-ton plant is in the works for 2021, he
adds. “Our business model is built on
the fact that we will be competitive with
virgin PET.”
As exciting as PET biorecycling could
be, PET is only one plastic, says Nick
Wierckx of RWTH Aachen University.
The next step would be processes that can
degrade plastics with different types of
chemical bonds and cocktails of enzymes
that could handle mixtures of plastics, he
says.
It’s not entirely a hypothetical for
Wierckx. He and Zimmermann are two
members of a European consortium
called P4SB, which aims to convert waste
PET and polyurethane to high-value
chemical feedstocks (Microb. Biotechnol.
2015, DOI: 10.1111/1751-7915.12312). The
consortium’s efforts are largely at the
gram scale so far, Wierckx says, but the
long-term goal is to create a system simi-
lar to what exists for converting biomass
to biofuels.
Although plastics biorecycling holds
promise, the field has its share of challeng-
es, so the media should be cautious, urges
Opatz, the caterpillar skeptic. A step for-
ward shouldn’t be billed as a planet-sav-
ing breakthrough. “If you tell the public
that this problem has been solved when
it hasn’t,” he explains, “people will be
waiting for practical solutions, and they’ll
be annoyed if in 10 years’ time there’s
still polyethylene debris lying around or
floating in the oceans. They’ll say, ‘What’s
wrong with you scientists? You solved the
problem 10 years ago, and we still have
this mess.’ ”
At the end of the day, Opatz adds, cava-
lier coverage “undermines the relationship
between science and society.” ◾
JUNE 18, 2018 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN 33
 COMMENT
Supporting ACS’s volunteers
CAROLYN RIBES, CHAIR, ACS COMMITTEE ON COMMITTEES
E
very year, thousands of dedicated
and talented volunteers channel
their passion for chemistry, ed-
ucation, advocacy, diversity, and
other issues into tangible deliverables that
make an impact on the American Chemi-
cal Society, the chemistry profession, and
society as a whole.
ACS volunteers ded-
icate their time and
talents to realizing the
ACS vision of “improving
people’s lives through
the transforming power
of chemistry.” Some of
these volunteers have
been contributing their
efforts to local and na-
tional projects for ACS
for decades.
ACS’s committee sys-
tem, which is made up
of more than 40 council
and/or board-related
committees, provides a framework for
volunteer engagement at the national
level. Many volunteers report that they
have benefited from opportunities to get
involved though local section, commit-
tee, division, and governance activities.
Because ACS is a membership society,
strong engagement of members at multi-
ple levels is a key factor in the success of
the organization.
The mission of the ACS Committee
on Committees (ConC) is to ensure that
ACS committees are optimally organized,
resourced, and engaged. ConC has defined
four strategic goals to reach our vision
of an effective and dynamic committee
system:
▸▸Develop strategies to best match the
needs and demands of committees with
member expertise and perspectives.
ConC is working with each committee to
identify the skills, experience, and exper-
C R E D I T: CO URT ESY O F CA RO LY N R I BES
tise the committee needs and is estab-
lishing ways to identify volunteers to fill
those needs.
▸▸Increase the number of qualified and
committed volunteers from diverse com-
munities by developing ways to expand
the reach of committee preference forms
to include a more diverse pool of potential
volunteers.
▸▸Partner with ACS committees to en-
hance their communications, networking,
and collaborations. Activities include
sponsoring interactive sessions for com-
mittee chairs, sharing committee goals
and activities among ACS committees, and
organizing “speed networking for commit-
tees” events.
▸▸Identify, assess, and recommend en-
hancements to improve
the effectiveness and
ConC needs to ensure
that we have a committee
system that encourages the
participation of all members
and all generations.
sustainability of the com-
mittee system.
Given ConC’s vision of effective and
dynamic committees, our committee
system should provide a meaningful
volunteer experience; facilitate excel-
lent collaboration, communication, and
coordination among committees; drive
impactful decision-making; provide
transparency; connect individual mem-
bers to national governance; and, above
all, achieve the purpose of ACS as defined
in our congressional charter. Although we
have a strong system now, we also have to
consider what the future may bring and
how the committee system can best sup-
port the changing demographics of our
membership.
ACS has enjoyed decades of success
with volunteers who are willing and able
to attend the two national meetings each
year and work to achieve committee goals
between meetings. However, we miss
the contributions of members who are
not able to commit to attending those
meetings and yet would like to engage at
the national level. Today’s technologies
provide opportunities for changing the
way volunteers contribute, and we need to
take full advantage of those technologies
to find ways to involve more members and
minimize some of the present require-
ments, such as travel.
Volunteerism is evolving with each
ACS
NEWS
generation, and ACS has volunteers across
multiple generations (traditional, baby
boomer, Generation X, Generation Y, and
Generation Z). Our committee system
needs to embrace each generation’s val-
ues, needs, and styles.
These differences include a likelihood
to volunteer on an ongoing basis ver-
sus a tendency to volunteer for discrete
projects; a willingness to travel for their
efforts versus a preference for working
from home; and a reliance on face-to-
face interaction versus a comfort with
telecommunication.
ConC needs to ensure that we have a
committee system that encourages the
participation of all members and all gen-
erations. We have to ask ourselves if our
paradigm of assigning 750-plus members
to committees that meet twice a year in
person (typically at national meetings) is
the best way to achieve our purpose and
provide meaningful volunteer experiences
for all our members.
We have to consider if our current sys-
tem encourages or constrains volunteers
and what options exist for engaging more
members in reaching our goals of provid-
ing information solutions, empowering
members and member communities,
supporting excellence in education, and
communicating chemistry’s value.
ConC wants to hear the thoughts
of ACS members as we seek input on
ways to sustain and enhance the effec-
tiveness, collaborations, and commu-
nications of the committee system and
­improve the volunteer experience for all
its participants. Please send your com-
ments, ideas, and thoughts to secretary@
acs.org.
Views expressed are those of the author and
not necessarily those of C&EN or ACS.
JUNE 18, 2018 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN 35
 ▸▸ ACS Board actions
from the June
executive meeting
The ACS Board of Directors met on
June 1–2 in Baltimore and took several ac-
tions. The following are highlights:
On the recommendation of the Commit-
tee on Pensions & Investments, the board
approved an amendment to the ACS De-
fined Contribution Retirement Plan.
On the recommendation of the Commit-
tee on Professional & Member Relations,
the board approved a nominee for the 2019
Othmer Gold Medal, reestablished the
Henry H. Storch Award in Energy Chem-
istry for presentation beginning in 2020,
and authorized ACS financial support for
several awards for 2020 presentation unless
sponsors are found to support them.
The board confirmed council appoval of
the continuation of the Joint Board-Council
Committee on Publications, as well as the
Younger Chemists Committee.
The board also approved the estab-
lishment of new international chemical
sciences chapters in Jordan and Qatar,
confirmed the Petition on the Composi-
tion of Society Committees, and approved
the list of Petroleum Research Fund grant
recommendations submitted by the PRF
Advisory Board.
The board agreed that a distribution
of $750,000 received from the board of
trustees for the Group Insurance Plans
should be used to establish a scholarship
fund for Project SEED. Also, after 39 years
of service to the society, ACS Treasurer and
Chief Financial Officer Brian Bernstein an-
nounced his plans to retire at the end of the
year. The search for his successor is under
way.—LINDA WANG
▸▸ Chemistry Olympiad
Study Camp begins
From June 10 to 25, 20 students selected by
the ACS-sponsored U.S. National Chem-
istry Olympiad program are attending the
Chemistry Olympiad Study Camp at the
U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado.
The students are vying for a spot on the
four-member team representing the U.S. at
the 50th International Chemistry Olympi-
C R E D I T: GLE N N RUS K IN
ad, which will start in Bratislava, Slovakia,
on July 19 and end in Prague on July 29.
Representing 13 ACS local sections and
10 states, the students are Jenny Cai, Park
Tudor School in Indianapolis; Andrew
Chen, Stuyvesant High School in New York
Willie May recognized
for public service
On May 31, Willie May received the
2017 ACS Award for Public Service
from ACS Board Chair John Adams
at a dinner preceding the ACS Board
of Directors meeting in Baltimore.
It is the highest award the American
Chemical Society can convey to rec-
ognize exceptional public service.
May, former director of the National
Institute of Standards & Technology,
was nominated for the award by the
ACS Committee on Chemistry &
Public Affairs in recognition of his
leadership of NIST and for his life-
time accomplishments as a chemist,
administrator, and leader supporting
U.S. science and technology pro-
grams.—GLENN RUSKIN, ACS staff
City; Yutong Dai, Princeton International
School of Math & Science in Princeton,
N.J.; Aniket Dehadrai, Oklahoma School
of Science & Mathematics in Oklahoma
City; Allen Ding, Stevenson High School
in Lincolnshire, Ill.; Edward Jin, Arnold
O. Beckman High School in Irvine, Calif.;
Omar Khan, Oklahoma School of Science
& Mathematics; Chanseo Lee, Lexington
High School in Lexington, Mass.; Alex
Li, Lexington High School; Albert Liu,
North Hollywood High School in North
Hollywood, Calif.; David Liu, West Wind-
sor-Plainsboro High School South in Princ-
eton Junction, N.J.; Michelle Lu, Pomper-
aug High School in Southbury, Conn.;
Anton Ni, University High School in Irvine,
Calif.; Yajvan Ravan, Churchill High School
in Livonia, Mich.; Jeffrey Shi, Marcellus
High School in Marcellus, N.Y.; Matthew
Wang, Troy High School in Troy, Mich.;
Andrew Wu, Park Tudor School; David
Wu, Westview High School in San Diego;
Iris Yan, Carmel High School in Carmel,
Ind.; and Albert Zhu, Solon High School in
Solon, Ohio.
For more information, visit the U.S.
National Chemistry Olympiad website at
www.acs.org/olympiad.—LINDA WANG
▸▸ ACS Nigeria Chapter
hosts symposium in Uyo
On March 4–7, the ACS Nigeria Interna-
tional Chemical Sciences Chapter hosted a
ACS
NEWS
Willie May (left) receives the ACS
Award for Public Service.
symposium in Uyo, Nigeria, with the theme
“Sustainable Chemistry: Eco-Innovation for
Equitable Societies & Industries.”
Nearly 350 people participated in the
conference, which featured 56 oral and 16
poster presentations. Discussions focused
on economic and social development
through sustainable management of natural
resources, as well as how to achieve cleaner
energy through cost-effective processes.
Technical sessions covered chemical
monitoring and risk assessment for a safer
environment; materials for cleaner energy
and environment; sustainable industrial
processes through green synthetic chem-
istry and catalysis; waste valorization for
energy and nutrient recovery; and new
phyto- and agrochemicals for sustainable
agriculture and health.
Keynote speaker Augustine Igbuku,
corporate environment manager of Shell
Petroleum Development Company of Nige-
ria, spoke of the role of chemistry in the oil
and gas exploration and production sector
in Nigeria. Anthony I. Okoh, director of the
South African Medical Research Council’s
Microbial Water Quality Monitoring Unit
at the University of Fort Hare, encouraged
younger researchers to apply for research
scholarships from their institutions.
Participating organizations included
the Chemical Society of Nigeria, Acad-
emy of Science of South Africa, Science
Teachers Association of Nigeria, and
the University of Uyo’s department of
chemistry.—SHAIBU ENEOJO SOLOMON,
special to ACS
JUNE 18, 2018 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN 37
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 Newscripts
stones in biopsy samples, King explains. It can also be
used to identify chemicals that have a fixed refractive
index by taking a sample of a known thickness and
comparing the colors to known values.
“I get the prettiest results out of amino acid com-
binations,” he says. “I really like to make compounds
that we see in our everyday lives stimulating or inspir-

Curating quirky science since 1943 ing for people to look at who maybe aren’t as familiar
with chemistry as we are.”

Masterpiece Magic angle art

microscopy
S
peaking of scientific work that is hard to
explain at a party, consider the challenge for
John Muntean, a solid-state nuclear magnetic

C
hris King is a histology technician at the resonance spectroscopist at Argonne Nation-
National Institutes of Health, near Washing- al Laboratory.
ton, D.C. He enjoys his work, which features NMR is normally done in the solution phase, where
heavy use of microscopy, but used to find molecular motion averages out the orientation of the
it hard to explain what he does to friends and family. molecules being studied. In
“So I started taking pictures of some of the tissue an amorphous solid, every
stains and other things at work, and they seemed to orientation is present, he
get it better,” he says. explains. But by spinning
Soon he was doing experiments to see how he samples at what’s known as
could manipulate various substances to produce in- the magic angle, researchers
teresting colors and shapes. His family was interested can get a single value for all
in what he was doing, so they helped him get his own those different directions.
microscope at home. He picked up other used lab It may sound mystical,
equipment on eBay. Now his lab-studio dominates his but Muntean notes that it’s
just geometry. “Some people
struggle with understanding
the importance of the magic
angle,” he tells Newscripts.

Teaching tool: John

Muntean’s sculpture casts
three different shadows.

“So as a means of demon-

strating it, I created the first
magic angle sculpture.”
Muntean’s sculptures
spin at the same magic angle
as his molecules. At each of
three iterations of that spin,
the pieces cast a different

C R E D I T: CH R I S K I NG ( MI C ROS CO PY ) ; JO H N MU N TEA N ( S H A D OWS )

shadow. He says the math he
uses to create his artwork is
exactly the same as what he
uses in his science. The art
Feathery: Chris King apartment. “It’s in part of my is “a way to explain to peo-
combined amino acids β- bedroom, and then most of the ple, without any math, with-
alanine and l-glutamine under kitchen, and the dining room is out any understanding of
a polarized light microscope. pretty much dedicated to it.” chemical shift tensors, what
King tells Newscripts that it is that we’re doing.”
most of his time outside work is spent on microscope His artwork has taken him to some unexpected
art. “Usually Thursdays I kinda dedicate places. “I’m in museums, I have a patent pending on
the whole night to it. I’ll spend an hour or Craig Bettenhausen the design methods, and I’ve been featured in national
two every day, including editing.” wrote this week’s ad campaigns,” he says. An advertising firm asked if
But polarized light microscopy is not column. Please he could do his sculptures in Lego. For an artist, “the
just pretty colors. The technique is used send comments answer is always yes, even if you can’t. So I said, ‘Sure,
to spot defects in transparent materials, and suggestions to why not?’ That’s the kind of confidence that chemists
visualize tissue features, and spot kidney newscripts@acs.org. bring to problems all the time,” he says.

40 C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | JUNE 18, 2018

 ®

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