Researchers shed light on how to make photopolymerization much more efficient

Polymers are materials made out of long, repeating chains of molecules, and it is the interaction between these chains that dictates most of a polymer's physicochemical properties. In accordance with this intuitive understanding of polymers, which dates back to the 1930s, external forces acting on polymers are mainly regarded as destructive. For example, stretching a polymer can disentangle or break apart some of its constituent chains, weakening the overall material.