Join Professor Koon-Yang Lee, Professor in Polymer Engineering, online or in-person for his Imperial Inaugural.

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Abstract

Cellulose is the most abundant organic polymer on earth. When we think of cellulose, we think of them as part of our diet, we think of them as a sheet of paper we write on and we think of them as something we wear to protect ourselves from the surrounding environment. Are these the limiting applications of cellulose?

Increasing energy cost, heavy legislative pressures, consumer’s demand for environmental friendlier products, carbon neutral technologies and a sustainable future have all triggered fresh interest in research and development of green(er) materials. At the heart of this is actually cellulose. Not only is cellulose fully bio-based and biodegradable, it is able to form interesting material structures and this sparked a new wave of research into the design of cellulose-derived advanced engineering materials.

In his inaugural lecture, Koon-Yang will demonstrate the potential for cellulose for various engineering applications, including the production of greener engineering materials, optically transparent amour for impact protection and advanced coatings for filtrations. Cellulose-based engineering materials are not a recent invention. Back in the 1940s, cellulose had been explored as aluminium replacement for advanced aeronautical engineering applications. We are now in a time and age where we are going “back to the cellulose future”.