Background/Objectives

Polymers are irreplaceable in the global economy, with myriad uses in packaging, construction, transportation, electronics, and healthcare industries. The choice to use plastics, instead of other materials, is expedient because they are lightweight, strong, and chemical resistant, with a variety of properties enabled by their molecular and macromolecular structures. However, their massive-scale manufacture, single-use function, and long environmental lifetimes have created a crisis of plastics waste, with neg. impacts on human and animal health, disruptions to ecosystems, and underutilization of our carbon-based natural resources. Unfortunately, conventional mechanical recycling methods are limited by considerable technological and economic challenges.

Approach/Activities

Chemical upcycling, defined as selective conversion of waste into products with higher value than the virgin material, is an emerging alternative to classical recycling methods. Converting polyolefin plastics into chemicals and materials with desirable properties requires the ability to break inert carbon-carbon (C-C) bonds in the long chains of chemical indistinguishable repeat units at regularly spaced intervals and to introduce functionality into the products.

Results/Lessons Learned

We are creating abiotic, robust, selective multifunctional inorganic catalytic architectures to achieve such cleavage reactions, producing fragments with a narrow range of chain lengths. We have also discovered new transformations of polyolefins into recyclable lubricants, degradable surfactants, and re-polymerizable macromonomers. Synergy between experts in inorganic and polymeric materials crosscuts our expertise in molecular-scale and heterogeneous catalysis, creating multi-disciplinary collaborative projects to achieve the goals.