The potential for recycling is one of the motivations for Balsara's research, which aims at growing controlled microscopic structures of one polymer in another. Using simple chemical reactions, he synthesizes polymers, then applies physical principles in attempting to obtain specific shapes, such as microscopic cylinders or pancakes, out of polymer molecules. This control over microscopic structures in polymer mixtures appears to be the key to reusing them. Nature does this all the time. For example, a cell wall is oily and inside the cell is watery.
Nature has many recipes to mix oil and water.
I want to extend those recipes to mix polymers. There is a finite amount of oil from which plastic can be made-the same plastic that is in your cutting board is also used for hip replacements and lining artificial organs. Other applications for controlled growth of polymer structures are as far from landfills as one can imagine. Optics technology, for example, is emerging as one answer to the rapidly approaching speed limits of electronics-based computing. Optical computing requires producing a perfectly regular wire mesh out of wires a few tens of nanometers in diameter.