Journal
NATURE CHEMISTRY
Volume 11, Issue 5, Pages 442-448Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/s41557-019-0249-2
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Funding
- Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory under US Department of Energy [DE-AC02-05CH11231]
- US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists (WDTS) under the Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) programme
- Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the US Department of Energy [DE-AC02-05CH11231]
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Recycled plastics are low-value commodities due to residual impurities and the degradation of polymer properties with each cycle of re-use. Plastics that undergo reversible polymerization allow high-value monomers to be recovered and re-manufactured into pristine materials, which should incentivize recycling in closed-loop life cycles. However, monomer recovery is often costly, incompatible with complex mixtures and energy-intensive. Here, we show that next-generation plastics-polymerized using dynamic covalent diketoenamine bonds-allow the recovery of monomers from common additives, even in mixed waste streams. Poly(diketoenamine)s 'click' together from a wide variety of triketones and aromatic or aliphatic amines, yielding only water as a by-product. Recovered monomers can be re-manufactured into the same polymer formulation, without loss of performance, as well as other polymer formulations with differentiated properties. The ease with which poly(diketoenamine) s can be manufactured, used, recycled and re-used-without losing value-points to new directions in designing sustainable polymers with minimal environmental impact.
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