Kulik: Polymer Toughness Relies on Previously Unobserved Quantum Mechanical Phenomenon
Heather Kulik · 🔬There Is No AlphaFold for Materials — AI for Materials Discovery with Heather Kulik · Mar 24, 2026 · at 4:02
MIT Associate Professor Heather Kulik explains the underlying chemical and quantum mechanical mechanism behind her lab's breakthrough discovery of high-toughness polymers.
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“But what we discovered was that there was a fully quantum mechanical phenomenon. There was really no way for us to predict this, you know, based on anything else, where the electrons just move around in a different way so that at this moment where the molecule is going to break apart, it's a lot more stabilized. These types of concepts, they're sort of, Similar to what's kind of known about how catalysts and enzymes work, but it had never before been shown in, in these polymer materials.”
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