From Waste to Worth: Synthetic Strategies for Plastics Functionalization

The global demand for nonbiodegradable plastics with inert and saturated C-C backbones is continuously growing with population and development, because of their outstanding properties and extensive applications; nevertheless, large fractions of the waste plastics are incinerated or landfilled, resulting in low recycling rate.1 At the same time, advances in automotive, robotics, and electronics increase demand for high-performance plastics with high-temperature resistance, light-weight, and tunable toughness.2 These trends, make it urgent to redesign plastics to they deliver better performance while enabling recyclability and biodegradation.

This seminar will review recent synthetic strategies to modify polyolefins and emerging bio-based polymers to meet the dual objective of improved functionalities and sustainability. We will cover catalytic functionalization of polyolefins by direct copolymerization to introduce protic nucleophilic groups;2 post-modification C-H substitution and grafting to install polar branches;3 and dynamic crosslinking of polyolefins by diketoenamine to produce reprocessable networks with enhanced thermomechanical properties.4 In parallel, we will discuss route to chemically synthesize bio-based polymers by ring-opening polymerization or polycondensation.

 

References

  1. Yeung, C. W.; Teo, J. Y.;  Loh, X. J.; Lim, J. Y., Polyolefins and polystyrene as chemical resources for a sustainable future: challenges, advances, and prospects. ACS Materials Letters 2021, 3 (12), 1660-1676.
  2. Jasinska-Walc, L.; Bouyahyi, M.; Duchateau, R., Potential of functionalized polyolefins in a sustainable polymer economy: synthetic strategies and applications. Accounts of Chemical Research 2022, 55 (15), 1985-1996.
  3. Plummer, C. M.; Li, L.; Chen, Y., The post-modification of polyolefins with emerging synthetic methods. Polymer Chemistry 2020, 11 (43), 6862-6872.
  4. Neidhart, E. K.; Hua, M.;  Peng, Z.;  Kearney, L. T.;  Bhat, V.;  Vashahi, F.;  Alexanian, E. J.;  Sheiko, S. S.;  Wang, C.; Helms, B. A., C–H functionalization of polyolefins to access reprocessable polyolefin thermosets. Journal of the American Chemical Society 2023, 145 (50), 27450-27458.