Materials Girl

Sweet! This totally needs a video though. 

From ingredients that are currently available and used in industry (epoxy resins, hardeners, catalysts, etc.), researchers from the Laboratoire “Matière Molle et Chimie” (CNRS/ESPCI ParisTech) developed a novel organic material made of a molecular network with original properties: under the action of heat, this network is capable of reorganizing itself without altering the number of cross-links between its atoms. This novel material goes from the liquid to the solid state or vice versa, just like glass. Until now, only silica and some inorganic compounds were known to show this type of behavior. The material thus acts like purely organic silica. It is insoluble even when heated above its glass transition temperature.

What’s that? check out my old post on glass transition temperature.