materiO’

Good news is scarce nowadays, and this one is great for the planet. The Carbios company has just produced the first transparent bottle from rPTA (Recycled Purified Terephralic Acid). This is truly a tour de force, because this virgin polymer is obtained from old used clothes with a high PET content. To explain to you, this common bottle is the promise of being able to re-use old soiled plastics from second rate to the "first league", as raw material for our everyday objects. A real upcycling sector for plastic, essential for treating the tons of PET waste which today invades our landfills and the oceans. The circle has come full circle !!! With plastic waste, we make blank bottles, textiles, objects, which then produce waste which remakes virgin material, then bottles, ... etc ... It's not beautiful !!

A team of chemists from Hefei University in China are currently working on the development of a new composite directly inspired by the structure of mother-of-pearl. Sea shells have been the subject for many years of scientific study to unravel the mystery of their extraordinary hardness and resistance. It seems that their intimate construction, of thin mineral bricks stacked and strongly glued to each other, is the secret of their exceptional characteristics. Chinese researchers have therefore transposed the principle by using mica chips as bricks and cellulose nanofibers in mortar, following a manufacturing process called "assembly by directional deformation". The first prototypes exceeded their expectations, because they offered great strength, rigidity, toughness, thermal stability and low coefficient of thermal expansion. In short, a natural material and produced at low cost which could replace polymers in many uses. Another fine example of bio-mimicry.
The Article on Nature Journal

On the eve of a probable reconfinement, let's escape at the sea a bit, on my transparent paddle board. LOEVA took three years to find the magic material that could meet the specifications: a light material, resistant to UVs, salt water, scratches, shocks and even sunscreen ... The choice is is therefore carried on a new PMMA (learned word for an acrylic plate) nano-structured which also offers optimal transparency. The result? Once at sea, the board erases the surface ripples, the boarder literally walks on the water, perched on a veritable 3 m2 panoramic screen that allows you to admire the seabed at your leisure, discover the aquatic flora and fauna. And when the sun goes down, a row of LEDs offers you to extend the show by creating a halo of light under the paddle! That's too much!

Website LOEVA

The France 3 TV show "Paname" did us the honor of coming to visit us ten days ago, for a quick discovery of material, embellished with some handling of strange materials. If you missed the TV broadcast, you can find this excerpt on our blog, here

Each day of the calendar now has its cause, its theme, its spotlight. Well today is World Bamboo Day, the opportunity to honor this herbaceous plant (yes, it's not wood), with its ultra-fast growth, its legendary hardness and with multiple applications. Conferences organized throughout the day and all over the world, also an opportunity to discover very ambitious bamboo architectural projects. And of course, dozens of ID Cards in our database related to bamboo, panels, parquet, veneers, fiber, bamboo charcoal, structural principles etc. The WBD program is here