The cover image is based on the article Recent Advances in Antimicrobial Food Packaging From Bio-Based Polymers: A Comprehensive Review by Purba Purnama et al., https://doi.org/10.1002/app.57275.

This work reviews the potential of bio-based polymers for sustainable food packaging, outlining inorganic and natural antimicrobial agents and their mechanisms. It highlights synergistic effects in antimicrobial packaging and explores future advancements in this field.

This study explores phosphatized starch (PS) as a bio-based flame retardant in epoxy thermosets. PS promotes char and intumescent layer formation, reducing peak heat release rate by 70%, total heat release by 52%, and smoke release by 53%. Thermal and combustion analyses confirm PS's effectiveness, highlighting its potential for sustainable fire-safe materials.

HMDI-SPH not only has a huge advantage in transparency, but also has the best overall mechanical properties, especially in terms of strength, true stress, toughness, and modulus.

Our current work was to use allyl palladium chloride complex ((η³-allyl)Pd(Cl)PPh₃) as a catalyst to catalyze the polymerization of 5-norbornene-2-methylenehexyl ether (NB-MHE) and 5-norbornene-2-methylene-(6-bromohexyl) ether (NB-O-Br), and under the action of the crosslinking agent 1,4-diazabicyclo[2.2.2]octane (DABCO), a series of CL-aPNB-x-DABCO-TMA with different crosslinking degrees were prepared. The designed decomposition temperature of the crosslinked AEMs was about 200°C. The OH⁻ conductivity of CL-aPNB-5%-DABCO-TMA was 135.41 mS cm⁻¹ at 80°C. The AEMs with the 20% crosslinking degree exhibited the best alkali-resistant stability, retaining 89.29% after 35 days, And the AEMs with the 5% crosslinking degree lost less than 20% after 35 days.

A bilayered scaffold with an inner layer of electrospun polyvinyl alcohol co-ethylene and an outer layer of electrospun gelatin vinyl acetate copolymer and polycaprolactone blend is fabricated and characterized. Adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells are cultured on the scaffold, and differentiation to smooth muscle lineage using all-trans retinoic acid is performed and characterized. The bilayered scaffold provides an ideal matrix for vascular regeneration.

First, a stable and efficient polymerization process for synthesizing dicarboxylic-terminated polyamide 1010 prepolymer (PA1010dC) is obtained based on polymerization kinetics optimization. Subsequently, a series of biobased long carbon-chain polyamide elastomers (LCPAEs) with tunable hardness and mechanical properties is successfully prepared via changing the relative content of wholly biobased hard segments (PA1010dC) and soft segments (polytetramethylene ether glycol (PTMG)).

This study investigates EPDM compounds for CO₂ transport systems. Carbon black significantly improves barrier properties, while crosslinking density has minimal impact. Liquid CO₂ causes negligible extraction compared to organic solvents. Solvent extraction increases stiffness, enhancing barrier performance. WAXS analysis confirms the structural stability of the polymer after LCO₂ exposure, suggesting its suitability for CO₂ transport applications under relevant test conditions.

This work presents a more efficient and sustainable method for fabricating NGF-loaded, highly aligned core-shell nanofibers with minimal diameter and narrow size distribution. In this study, we employed a design-of-experiment approach to systematically investigate how controllable parameters in coaxial electrospinning influence the diameter and size distribution of aligned poly(ethylene oxide/poly(l-lactide-co-glycolide)) nanofibers loaded with nerve growth factor.

The distribution of the adhesion strength developed upon the adhesion origination at the interface between the specimens of polystyrene and poly(2,6-dimethyl-1,4-phenylene oxide), the polymers with acutely different intensities of chain mobility, is analyzed for its conformity to the Weibull and normal distributions using the Weibull and normal probability plots and by performing a series of standard tests for normality.