Uses

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Being transparent and durable, PMMA is a versatile material and has been used in a wide range of fields and applications such as: rear-lights and instrument clusters for vehicles, appliances and lenses for glasses. PMMA in the form of sheets affords shatter resistant panels for building windows, skylights, bullet proof security barriers, signs & displays, sanitary ware (bathtubs), LCD screens, furniture and many other applications. It is also used for coating polymers based on MMA provides outstanding stability against environmental conditions with reduced emission of VOC. Methacrylate polymers are used extensively in medical and dental applications where purity and stability are critical to performance.^{[citation needed]}

Transparent glass substitute

Close-up of pressure sphere of Bathyscaphe Trieste, with single conical window of PMMA (Plexiglas) set into sphere hull. The very small black circle (smaller than the man's head) is the inner side of the plastic "window," and is only a few inches in diameter. The larger circular clear black area represents the larger outer-side of the thick one-piece plastic cone "window."

10 meter deep Monterey Bay Aquarium tank has acrylic windows up to 33 cm thick to withstand the water pressure

• PMMA acrylic glass is commonly used for constructing residential and commercial aquariums. Designers started building big aquariums when poly(methyl methacrylate) could be used. It is less-used in other building types due to incidents such as the Summerland disaster.
• Acrylic is used for viewing ports and even complete pressure hulls of submersibles, such as the Alicia submarine's viewing sphere and the window of the bathyscaphe Trieste.
• PMMA is used in the lenses of exterior lights of automobiles.^[25]
• The spectator protection in ice hockey rinks is made from PMMA.
• Historically, PMMA was an important improvement in the design of aircraft windows, making possible such designs as the bombardier's transparent nose compartment in the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress.
• Police vehicles for riot control often have the regular glass replaced with acrylic to protect the occupants from thrown objects.
• Acrylic is an important material in the making of certain lighthouse lenses.^[26]
• PMMA was used for the roofing of the compound in the Olympic Park for the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. It enabled a light and translucent construction underlining the democratic approach to the games.^[27]
• PMMA (under the brand name "Lucite") was used for the ceiling of the Houston Astrodome.

Daylight redirection

• Laser cut acrylic panels have been used to redirect sunlight into a light pipe or tubular skylight and, from there, to spread it into a room.^[28] Their developers Veronica Garcia Hansen, Ken Yeang, and Ian Edmonds were awarded the Far East Economic Review Innovation Award in bronze for this technology in 2003.^[29][30]
• Attenuation being quite strong for distances over one meter (more than 90% intensity loss for a 3000 K source^[31]), acrylic broadband light guides are then dedicated mostly to decorative uses.
• Pairs of acrylic sheets with a layer of microreplicated prisms between the sheets can have reflective and refractive properties that let them redirect part of incoming sunlight in dependence on its angle of incidence. Such panels act as miniature light shelves. Such panels have been commercialized for purposes of daylighting, to be used as a window or a canopy such that sunlight descending from the sky is directed to the ceiling or into the room rather than to the floor. This can lead to a higher illumination of the back part of a room, in particular when combined with a white ceiling, while having a slight impact on the view to the outside compared to normal glazing.^[32][33]

Medical technologies and implants

• PMMA has a good degree of compatibility with human tissue, and it is used in the manufacture of rigid intraocular lenses which are implanted in the eye when the original lens has been removed in the treatment of cataracts. This compatibility was discovered by the English ophthalmologist Sir Harold Ridley in WWII RAF pilots, whose eyes had been riddled with PMMA splinters coming from the side windows of their Supermarine Spitfire fighters – the plastic scarcely caused any rejection, compared to glass splinters coming from aircraft such as the Hawker Hurricane.^[34] Ridley had a lens manufactured by the Rayner company (Brighton & Hove, East Sussex) made from Perspex polymerised by ICI. On 29 November 1949 at St Thomas' Hospital, London, Ridley implanted the first intraocular lens at St Thomas's Hospital in London.^[35]

In particular, acrylic-type contact lenses are useful for cataract surgery in patients that have recurrent ocular inflammation (uveitis), as acrylic material induce less inflammation.

• Eyeglass lenses are commonly made from PMMA.
• Historically, hard contact lenses were frequently made of this material. Soft contact lenses are often made of a related polymer, where acrylate monomers containing one or more hydroxyl groups make them hydrophilic.
• In orthopedic surgery, PMMA bone cement is used to affix implants and to remodel lost bone. It is supplied as a powder with liquid methyl methacrylate (MMA). Although PMMA is biologically compatible, MMA is considered to be an irritant and a possible carcinogen. PMMA has also been linked to cardiopulmonary events in the operating room due to hypotension.^[36] Bone cement acts like a grout and not so much like a glue in arthroplasty. Although sticky, it does not bond to either the bone or the implant, it primarily fills the spaces between the prosthesis and the bone preventing motion. A disadvantage of this bone cement is that it heats up to 82.5 °C (180.5 °F) while setting that may cause thermal necrosis of neighboring tissue. A careful balance of initiators and monomers is needed to reduce the rate of polymerization, and thus the heat generated. A major consideration when using PMMA cement is the effect of stress shielding. Since PMMA has a Young's modulus between 1.8 and 3.1 GPa,^[37] which is lower than that of natural bone (around 14 GPa for human cortical bone),^[38] the stresses are loaded into the cement and so the bone no longer receives the mechanical signals to continue bone remodeling and so resorption will occur.^[39]
• Dentures are often made of PMMA, and can be color-matched to the patient's teeth & gum tissue. PMMA is also used in the production of ocular prostheses, such as the osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis.
• In cosmetic surgery, tiny PMMA microspheres suspended in some biological fluid are injected under the skin to reduce wrinkles or scars permanently.^[40] PMMA is also used to create false "muscles" by body builders.
• Plombage is an outdated treatment of tuberculosis where the pleural space around an infected lung was filled with PMMA balls, in order to compress and collapse the affected lung.
• Emerging biotechnology and Biomedical research uses PMMA to create microfluidic lab-on-a-chip devices, which require 100 micrometre-wide geometries for routing liquids. These small geometries are amenable to using PMMA in a biochip fabrication process and offers moderate biocompatibility.
• Bioprocess chromatography columns use cast acrylic tubes as an alternative to glass and stainless steel. These are pressure rated and satisfy stringent requirements of materials for biocompatibility, toxicity and extractables.