Prepolymer

The term pre-polymer refers to a monomer or system of monomers that have been reacted to an intermediate molecular mass state. This material is capable of further polymerization by reactive groups to a fully cured high molecular weight state. As such, mixtures of reactive polymers with un-reacted monomers may also be referred to as pre-polymers. The term “pre-polymer” and “polymer precursor” may be interchanged.

Lactic acid as a polymer precursor

Two molecules of lactic acid can be dehydrated to lactide, a cyclic lactone. A variety of catalysts can polymerise lactide to either heterotactic or syndiotactic polylactide, which as biodegradable polyesters with valuable (inter alia) medical properties are currently attracting much attention.

Nowadays, lactic acid is used as a monomer for producing polylactic acid (PLA) which later has application as biodegradable plastic. This kind of plastic is a good option for substituting conventional plastic produced from petroleum oil because of low emission of carbon dioxide. The commonly used process in producing lactic acid is via fermentation, and later to obtain the polylactic acid, the polymerization process follows.

gollark: Ah, sinthÖrion.

gollark: I figure people are mostly prompted by *something* instead of just bringing it up entirely at random, and a ControversialEsolangs server would lack many of those prompts if it's purely for that.

gollark: And controversial stuff has never arisen from discussing something else?

gollark: The idea of a "ControversialEsolangs" for that probably wouldn't work well for various reasons, including the difficulty of moving active conversations, cognitive overhead of switching and lots of overhead deciding when to switch, a smaller set of people there even if they could otherwise participate interestingly, and somewhat more difficult-to-express issues like, er, selection effects.

gollark: I think it's a nice-to-have property but not worth sacrificing much else for.

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