Chemically recyclable polyolefin-like multiblock polymers

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Zhao, Yucheng; Rettner, Emma M.; Harry, Katherine L.; Hu, Zhitao; Miscall, Joel; Rorrer, Nicholas A.; Miyake, Garret M.
• 署名单位: Colorado State University System; Colorado State University Fort Collins; Colorado State University System; Colorado State University Fort Collins; United States Department of Energy (DOE); National Renewable Energy Laboratory - USA
• 刊物名称: SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0036-9435
• DOI: 10.1126/science.adh3353
• 发表日期: 2023-10-20
• 页码: 310-314
• 关键词: polyethylene; ethylene; block; polymerization; polyesters; copolymers; rheology; plastics

摘要

Polyolefins are the most important and largest volume plastics produced. Unfortunately, the enormous use of plastics and lack of effective disposal or recycling options have created a plastic waste catastrophe. In this work, we report an approach to create chemically recyclable polyolefin-like materials with diverse mechanical properties through the construction of multiblock polymers from hard and soft oligomeric building blocks synthesized with ruthenium-mediated ring-opening metathesis polymerization of cyclooctenes. The multiblock polymers exhibit broad mechanical properties, spanning elastomers to plastomers to thermoplastics, while integrating a high melting transition temperature (T-m) and low glass transition temperature (T-g), making them suitable for use across diverse applications (T-m as high as 128 degrees C and T-g as low as -60 degrees C). After use, the different plastics can be combined and efficiently deconstructed back to the fundamental hard and soft building blocks for separation and repolymerization to realize a closed-loop recycling process.