Prof. Per Zetterlund

P1-023 Sustainable Polymers

Prof Zetterlund is a full professor at the Cluster for Advanced Macromolecular Design (CAMD) in the School of Chemical Engineering. CAMD is a world-renowned centre for polymer synthesis and characterization,

Prof Zetterlund’s research is concerned with the synthesis of polymer, polymeric nanoparticles, as well as hybrid polymeric materials with a variety of applications ranging from materials science to nanomedicine. He runs a large research group with significant funding both from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and industry (e.g. Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation, Nitto).

P1-023 In Progress

Synthesis of Sustainable Polymers for Thermoforming Applications

From a wider societal perspective, it is of utmost importance that materials synthesis is in harmony with environmental concerns, making use of renewable resources and supporting the circular economy. There is significant incentive to replace petrochemical building blocks, such as styrene frequently employed in thermoforming food and beverage packaging applications, with bio-based monomers derived from natural plants. The overall aim of this project is to prepare new materials suitable for thermoforming applications for food and beverage packaging based on copolymers and (co)polymer blends involving styrene and various sustainable (biomass) vinyl monomers. Overall, this project relates to the objective of transforming the current food and beverage packaging market from virgin plastics to sustainable materials by providing a new pathway to synthesis of sustainable food and beverage packaging materials from sustainable, renewable monomers (polymer building blocks) derived from biomass.

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