Machine Learning and AI Can Now Create Plastics That Easily Degrade

Plastic pollution is one of the most pressing environmental issues, and the increase in the production of disposable plastics does not help at all. These plastics would often take many years before they degrade, which poisons the environment. This has prompted efforts from nations to create a global treaty to help reduce plastic pollution. A combination of machine learning and artificial intelligence has accelerated the design of making materials, including plastics, with properties that quickly degrade without harming the environment and super-strong lightweight plastics for aircraft and satellites that would one day replace the metals being used. The researchers from the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago published their study in Science Advances on October 21, which shows a way toward designing polymers using a combination of modeling and machine learning.