A team led by Rodney D. Priestley, Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, has demonstrated the formation of ultrastable glassy polymer films, as reported in the April issue of the journal Nature Materials. Using a novel technique dubbed “Matrix Assisted Pulsed Laser Deposition” (MAPLE), the team deposited films of the common amorphous polymer PMMA (often known by the tradenames Plexiglas® or Lucite®), which show a glass transition temperature (softening p
