Polymer science is one of the few fundamental research fields where the results can be transferred into real-life products almost immediately. Industries need collaborations with the best researchers (universities or national laboratories) to elevate the field and favor the development of new materials, which will boost the chemical and materials business economy and ensure that innovative and sustainable polymer products are constantly being brought to the market. The mechanisms to ensure a seamless and fruitful collaboration are numerous, but few approaches really manage to incorporate the full range of polymer research from a molecular understanding to a macroscopic control of properties. We review some of the main components of standard industry–academia collaborations and propose to develop polymer open centers that put the business development objective as the starting point of the collaboration and allow those to gather and focus on different scientific fields toward a common objective.

Effective Industry–Academia Collaboration Driving Polymer Innovation

Polymer composites with PVdF-HFP matrix and BaTiO3 nanoparticles were prepared with different dispersion states to evaluate the impact of the dispersion state of the nanoparticles on dielectric properties. We observe that the dispersion state has two effects: first, the overall dielectric permittivity is a little higher in aggregated systems than in well-dispersed systems; Second, conductivity, together with a capacitive contribution, increase at low frequencies in aggregated systems as compared to well-dispersed systems. We propose that polarization couplings may enhance the effective permittivity in aggregated systems, and that Maxwell-Wagner-Sillars polarization may also contribute at low frequencies due to local percolation of the particles.

Nicolas Uguen

Papers

Effect of the Dispersion State on the Dielectric Properties in High Energy Density Polymer-Based Nanocomposites

Piezoionic sensors based on formulated PEDOT:PSS and Aquivion® for ionic polymer–polymer composites