The discovery of a rubber that is almost indestructible

Car tires, whose wear releases 6 million tons of particles into the environment each year, make this everyday object the second largest source of primary microplastics in the world. after textile fibers from petrochemicals . A team from the John Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts) has tackled this scourge by designing a new material, called "tanglemer," ten times more resistant to cracks than conventional natural rubber.

To transform the viscous latex into a solid material, these researchers devised a gentle method, without sulfur or intense heat, unlike the vulcanization process invented in the ^19th century by the American Charles Goodyear. This new approach preserves the long polymer chains of the rubber tree sap instead of fragmenting and weakening them.

Still at the proof of concept stage, the research was praised, upon its publication in Nature Sustainability , by the American researcher Michael Rubinstein , co-author of the world's leading textbook on polymer physics, Polymers Physics (Oxford University Press, 2003). In this new rubber, he says, "the numerous interlacings allow the polymers to slide, behaving more like rings than knots." This configuration allows for "stress redistribution" and "reduces the risk of fracture, thus preventing crack propagation." In an industry that has not seen any major innovation for decades, "the fundamental lessons of this study will offer new levers for materials design," predicts this informed observer.

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