Sha Ye, Chen Xiaofan, Sun Wei, Zhou Junfeng, He Yucheng, Xu Enhua, Luo Zhenyang, Zhou Yonghong, Jia Puyou
Department of Chemistry and Material Science, College of Science, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, 210037, China.
Institute of Chemical Industry of Forest Products, Chinese Academy of Forestry (CAF), Key Lab of Biomass Energy and Materials, Jiangsu Co-Innovation Center of Efficient Processing and Utilization of Forest Resources, Nanjing, 210042, China.
Nat Commun. 2024 Oct 1;15(1):8480. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-52850-0.
Polymers capable of depolymerizing back to their own monomers offer a promising solution to address the challenges in polymer sustainability. Despite significant progress has been achieved in plastics circularity, chemical recycling of thermoplastic elastomers is relatively less concerned, largely because of their intrinsic complex multicomponents. This work creates a homopolymer-based platform towards chemically recyclable but tough thermoplastic elastomers. It is enabled by a semicrystalline polymer with high molecular weight but low crystallinity, which is prepared through ring-opening metathesis polymerization of a fully biobased cyclic olefin. By shifting the ring-chain equilibrium, quantitative conversions were achieved for both forward polymerization and reverse depolymerization. This simple circular, high-performance thermoplastic elastomer platform based on biomass highlights the importance of monomer design in addressing three challenges in sustainable polymers: the feedstock renewability, depolymerization selectivity, and performance trade-offs.
能够解聚回其自身单体的聚合物为应对聚合物可持续发展方面的挑战提供了一个有前景的解决方案。尽管在塑料循环利用方面已取得显著进展，但热塑性弹性体的化学回收相对较少受到关注，这主要是由于其固有的复杂多组分特性。这项工作创建了一个基于均聚物的平台，用于制备可化学回收但坚韧的热塑性弹性体。这是通过一种具有高分子量但低结晶度的半结晶聚合物实现的，该聚合物是通过全生物基环状烯烃的开环易位聚合制备的。通过改变环 - 链平衡，正向聚合和反向解聚都实现了定量转化。这个基于生物质的简单循环、高性能热塑性弹性体平台突出了单体设计在应对可持续聚合物的三个挑战方面的重要性：原料可再生性、解聚选择性和性能权衡。
