TechnologyScientists at MIT Have Developed a New Plastic Stronger Than Steel Scientists have developed a lightweight plastic that will change the world

By Jessica Cherner

February 8, 2022

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In England, the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts’ plastic and balsa wood façade is proving that plastic has plenty of permanent uses—even in construction. Photo: View Pictures

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Why is plastic bad for the environment? It is one of those seemingly necessary evils: It’s as lightweight as it is durable, and it’s in pretty much everything. Plus, unlike other popular materials (think steel and glass), it doesn’t cost very much money or energy to produce. That said, there’s a reason why coffee shops are puncturing their lids with paper straws, and grocery stores are piling up produce within the confines of paper bags: Plastic is bad for everyone who touches it. Because it’s a synthetic material made by humans, plastic’s ingredient list comprises quite a few chemicals—some of which can be toxic—that make it nearly impossible to break down. Luckily, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are working on a new plastic that boasts all of the benefits and none of the disadvantages of the age-old version, which is quickly approaching its demise. It’s called 2DPA-1, and it’s two times stronger than steel and capable of conducting electricity and blocking gas. Regular plastic can’t do any of that.

Costa del Este in Panama City proves that plastic doesn’t just go away when you toss it. It can stick around for nearly 500 years before it starts to break down. Photo: Luis Acosta/Getty Images

Michael Strano, a chemical engineering professor at MIT and the lead author on the research paper recently published in Nature, used a bowl of spaghetti to explain how 2DPA-1 works in layman’s terms. The more noodles you pile into the bowl, the harder it will be to see its bottom. The sauce, however, can always find the bottom because the noodles—no matter how many there are—create little pockets of space between them, giving the sauce a route to the bottom of the bowl. In plastic’s case, the noodles are polymers that feature the same spaghetti-like pockets between them, but instead of sauce, it’s gas passing through them. Strano said that’s why you can still smell your leftovers no matter how tightly you seal your plastic baggie.

Like regular plastic, 2DPA-1 also has polymers, but they’re nothing like noodles. Instead, they’re one-dimensional discs that lay flat and link together by way of an unbreakable hydrogen bond. In other words, 2DPA-1 is really strong in a way that regular plastic isn’t. And it has a lot of practical uses depending on how it’s manufactured. For instance, the already strong sheets can be layered on top of one another, creating a legitimately unbreakable plastic. They can also be rolled into tubes and mixed with other plastics to make a two-in-one barrier that functions like armor, which got scientists thinking: What if we use this as a coating for anything donning a layer or two of paint, like a car? No matter what type of paint is used, cars’ surfaces eventually fall victim to the elements and begin to rust or rot. But with a layer of 2DPA-1 on top, they can last a lot longer because no gasses can break its super-strong seal. Applying 2DPA-1 as a protective jacket is only one of many highly practical uses for the newly developed plastic, already being licensed by private companies.

Plastic has played a big role in design for decades. Midcentury-modern icons Charles and Ray Eames were met with massive success when they unveiled the Molded Fiberglass chairs in 1950, but the negative environmental costs associated with fiberglass forced the duo to discontinue their beloved design. Luckily, in 2001, Herman Miller reintroduced the Molded Plastic chair in polypropylene, which is recyclable.Phoot: ullstein bild Dtl./Getty Images

An even more impactful use would be construction. After all, plastic is bad for the environment, and erecting skyscrapers with unsustainable materials doesn’t help. It would be a waste not to enlist the lightweight, easy-to-make substance that’s twice as strong as steel for more permanent uses like buildings in major cities. If anything, the buildings would last seemingly forever while reducing the carbon footprint, which everyone in cities experiencing climate change–related disasters would gladly appreciate.

Though 2DPA-1 is very much still in its infancy, it poses a big impact on the environment because better plastic means less plastic, which is always a good thing for living beings on land, in the sky, and below sea level.