Scientists have long been making synthetic substitutes for natural rubber but none of the materials they have designed matches the natural product with its remarkable property of increasing strength as it stretches. Rather than trying to mimic natural rubber, chemists and engineers at the Key Centre for Polymer Colloids , have been trying to improve on it. But rubber's biological origin also gives rise to unique problems.
Some people are highly allergic to the proteins in it.
His team has now patented a process that may enable the removal of allergy-causing proteins from rubber latex. Skin, DNA, vinyl and plastics are also polymers. Rubber latex, like milk and paint, is also a colloid, meaning that its polymer particles are suspended in a liquid. The Centre has patented a process of grafting synthetic polymers on to the molecules of rubber so it can tolerate treatment with acid to remove allergy-causing proteins. The material is rendered useless.