Pennsylvania, June 29 -- A plastic bottle thrown into a recycling bin could one day contribute to powering an electric vehicle, smartphone, or renewable energy storage system, according to a team of researchers at Penn State.

In a new study, researchers converted waste polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, into highly ordered synthetic graphite, a crystalline form of carbon. The formed graphite exhibited large, well-ordered crystallites, or microscopic regions of well-aligned carbon layers -- indicating a highly organized crystal structure. These properties exceeded those of commercial natural graphite samples, indicating that the PET-derived material had a more ordered crystal structure. Such structural ordering is a key indicator of suit...