Acrylic can be used as a:

Transparent glass substitute

• PMMA Acrylic glass is commonly used for constructing residential and commercial aquariums. Designers started building big aquariums when poly(methyl methacrylate) could be used. The spectacular size of both flat panels and tunnels in aquariums such as Monterey Bay, Tokyo Sea Life Park, Osaka, Nagoya, Georgia and Dubai Aquariums were made possible with the introduction of acrylic.
• PMMA is used in the lenses of exterior lights of automobiles.
• The spectator protection in ice hockey rinks is made from PMMA.
• Acrylic is used for viewing ports and even complete hulls of submersibles, such as the Alicia submarine's viewing spheres and the Bathyscaphe Trieste's windows.
• Polycast acrylic sheet is the most widely used material in aircraft transparencies (windows). In applications where the aircraft is pressurized, stretched acrylic is used.
• Acrylic is an important material in the making of certain lighthouse lenses.

Acrylic is also used to make infra-red receptors tamper-proof. Infra red radiation can travel via Acrylic, but it prevents damage to the receptor.

Daylight redirector

• Laser cut acrylic panels have been used to redirect sunlight into a light pipe and, from there, to spread it into a room. 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.
• Attenuation being quite strong for distances over one meter (more than 90% intensity loss for a 3000 K source), 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.

Medical technologies and implants

• PMMA has a good degree of compatibility with human tissue, and can be used for replacement intraocular lenses in the eye when the original lens has been removed in the treatment of cataracts. This compatibility was discovered 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. 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). When mixed these yield a dough-like cement that gradually hardens. Surgeons can judge the curing of the PMMA bone cement by pressing their thumb on it. 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. 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 big disadvantage to this bone cement is that it heats to quite a high temperature while setting and because of this it kills the bone in the surrounding area. It has a Young's modulus between cancellous bone and cortical bone. Thus it is a load sharing entity in the body not causing bone resorption.
• Dentures are often made of PMMA, and can be color-matched to the patient's teeth & gum tissue.
• In cosmetic surgery, tiny PMMA microspheres suspended in some biological fluid are injected under the skin to reduce wrinkles or scars permanently.
• A large majority of white Dental filling materials (i.e. composites) have PMMA as their main organic component.
• Emerging biotechnology and Biomedical research uses PMMA to create microfluidic lab-on-a-chip devices, which require 100 micron-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.

Artistic and aesthetic uses

• Acrylic paint essentially consists of PMMA suspended in water; however since PMMA is hydrophobic, a substance with both hydrophobic and hydrophilic groups needs to be added to facilitate the suspension.
• Modern furniture makers, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, seeking to give their products a space age aesthetic, incorporated Lucite and other PMMA products into their designs, especially office chairs. Many other products (for example, guitars) are sometimes made with acrylic glass to make the commonly opaque objects translucent.
• Acrylic has been used as a surface to paint on, for example by Salvador Dalí and David Grojean
• Diasec is a process which uses acrylic glass as a substitute for normal glass in picture framing. This is done for its relatively low cost, light weight, shatter-resistance, aesthetics and because it can be ordered in larger sizes than standard picture framing glass.
• From approximately the 1960s onward, sculptors and glass artists began using acrylics, especially taking advantage of the material's flexibility, light weight, cost and its capacity to refract and filter light.
• In the 1950s and 1960s, acrylic was an extremely popular material for jewellery, with several companies specialized in creating high-quality pieces from this material. Acrylic beads and ornaments are still sold by jewellery suppliers.

Other uses

High heel sandals with acrylic heels and soles.

 

An electric bass guitar with its body made out of perspex

• Sheets of acrylic are commonly used in the sign industry to make flat cut out letters in thicknesses typically varying from 3 to 25 millimeters (0.1 to 1.0 in). These letters may be used alone to represent a company's name and/or logo, or they may be a component of channel letters which are neon or LED illuminated. Acrylic's attractiveness, durability and resistance to warping make it an ideal interior and exterior sign material. Acrylic is also used extensively throughout the sign industry as a component of wall signs where it may be a backplate, painted on the surface or the backside, a faceplate with additional raised lettering or even photographic images printed directly to it, or a spacer to separate sign components. One of the most popular sheets is a non-glare, translucent which is sold in 1.6 millimeters (0.06 in) or 3 millimeters (0.12 in) in thicknesses.
• Acrylic was used in laserdisc optical media. (CDs and DVDs use polycarbonate for higher impact resistance.)
• It is used as a light guide for the backlights in TFT-LCDs.
• Plastic optical fiber used for short distance communication is made from PMMA, and perfluorinated acrylic, clad with fluorinated PMMA, in situations where its flexibility and cheaper installation costs outweigh its poor heat tolerance and higher attenuation over glass fiber.
• Acrylic, in a purified form, is used as the matrix in dye-doped solid-state gain media for solid state dye lasers.
• In semiconductor research and industry, acrylic aids as a resist in the electron beam lithography process. A solution consisting of the polymer in a solvent is used to spin coat silicon and other semiconducting and semi-insulating wafers with a thin film. Patterns on this can be made by an electron beam (using an electron microscope), deep UV light (shorter wavelength than the standard photolithography process), or X-rays. Exposure to these creates chain scission or (de-cross-linking) within the acrylic, allowing for the selective removal of exposed areas by a chemical developer, making it a positive photoresist. Acrylic's advantage is that it allows for extremely high resolution (nanoscale) patterns to be made. It is an invaluable tool in nanotechnology.
• Acrylic is used as a shield to stop beta radiation emitted from radioisotopes.
• Small strips of PMMA are used as dosimeter devices during the Gamma Irradiation process. The optical density of acrylic changes as the Gamma dose increases and can be measured with a spectrophotometer.
• Recently a blacklight-reactive tattoo ink using acrylic microcapsules was developed. This ink is reportedly safe for use, and claims to be Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved for use on wildlife that may enter the food supply.
• Acrylic can be used as a dispersant for ceramic powders to stabilize colloidal suspensions in non-aqueous mediums.
• Acrylic has also been used extensively as a hybrid rocket fuel.
• In the 1960s, luthier Dan Armstrong developed a line of electric guitars and basses whose bodies were made completely of acrylic. These instruments were marketed under the Ampeg brand. Ibanez and B.C. Rich have also made acrylic guitars.
• Ludwig-Musser makes a line of acrylic drums called Vistalites, well known as being used by Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham.
• Artificial fingernails are made of acrylic.
• Some modern briar, and occasionally meerschaum, tobacco pipes sport stems made of acrylic, although the vast majority of stems for such pipes are still made with the traditional vulcanized rubber.