Natnael Behabtu

BioMaterial Application Development Manager, DuPont

Natnael Behabtu is BioMaterial Application Development Manager at DuPont Industrial Biosciences, leading ideation, development and implementations of emerging and growth technologies to make materials from renewable feedstocks. Since joining DuPont Central research and Development, Natnael has worked on biomaterials, their process and unique material attributes. Within DuPont Industrial Bioscience business unit, his work is focused on application development of newly developed polysaccharide polymers. Natnael received an M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Bologna in 2006. In 2012, he completed his PhD in Chemical Engineering at Rice University. His doctoral studies focused on scalable manufacturing techniques, material understanding and applications for high performance, carbon based materials. The work of his thesis is the base for a recently founded start-up, DexMat.

Enzymatic Polymerization: Designed PolySaccharides & Applications in Engineered Fabrics

Polysaccharides are important biopolymers with a wide range of industrial and consumer product applications. Historically, structural polysaccharides such as cellulose have been the backbone of early material science for applications in fibers, films and early thermoplastics. Significant material categories and applications are based on the value adding conversion of cotton or wood based cellulose to engineered fabrics. DuPont Industrial Biosciences has developed a new family of polysaccharides ranging in molecular weights, solubility, and polymer architecture. The enzymatic polymerization process offers the opportunity to design the polymer structure and the material properties of these new biomaterials. This presentation will introduce first examples of this new class of biomaterials along with a series of application examples in the field of engineered fabrics providing differentiated performance.