Project

A large number of functional materials made of plastics shape our everyday life today at a high technological level. In order to maintain and further develop this, important decisions need to be made and a number of issues addressed. By focusing on the topics of raw material change, bioeconomy, and resource and climate efficiency, we are making an important contribution to this in the SUBI²MA project.

Questions about the biotransformation of plastics technology	Contribution by SUBI²MA
How can plastics technology contribute to defossilization?	Increasing the raw material base through renewable raw materials
How can bioplastics compete with fossil plastics?	Property enhancement by integration of biological compounds e.g. increased mechanical strength and switchable degradability
How can common plastics become more versatile and sustainable?	(Bio-)function enhancement, e.g. through robust integration of cells and complex biomolecules.
How can industrial processing of new classes of materials be ensured?	Development of processes at industrial level in parallel with material development
How can the development of new biomaterials be accelerated?	Requirements-based material design, digital twins of materials and digital mapping of processes
How can new materials be designed to be sustainable from the start?	LCA, biocompatibility and recycling design from the start

Our goals

New biobased materials

Polyamides are thermoplastic polymers from the group of engineering or high-performance polymers. We are introducing caramide as a new biobased polyamide. Caramide is not only biobased - it has unique properties for biopolyamides such as adjustable crystallinity up to amorphicity (transparency), chirality, or high temperature stability. Caramide can outperform fossil polyamides in many cases while being biobased and produced from accessible waste materials.

New biohybrid materials

Biohybrid materials have the potential to adapt to the properties of conventional plastics in such a way that they not only acquire additional functions, but also become more sustainable at the same time. Possible functions and additives include, for example, self-degrading polymers, bio-based flame retardants and the general expansion of the range of applications of the polymers PET, cellulose and polyamides through functional biomolecules. Our goal in the lighthouse project SUBI²MA is to demonstrate that scaling up such materials for their technical use is possible.

Sustainable fast-track developments

SUBI²MA will accelerate material developments. This will be done by digitalization and using model- and data-based simulation methods as consistently as possible and will include, for example, digital twins of materials, model-based adaptive DoE tools and multiscale simulations. Accompanying life cycle assessment is essential to achieve one's environmental goals. Complementary to LCA, we conduct investigations on the recyclability and thus the circularity of the newly developed materials.