Biorenewable and circular polyolefin thermoplastic elastomers

Ye Sha (), Xiaofan Chen, Wei Sun, Junfeng Zhou, Yucheng He, Enhua Xu, Zhenyang Luo, Yonghong Zhou and Puyou Jia ()
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Ye Sha: Nanjing Forestry University
Xiaofan Chen: Nanjing Forestry University
Wei Sun: Nanjing Forestry University
Junfeng Zhou: Xiangtan University
Yucheng He: Nanjing Forestry University
Enhua Xu: Kobe University
Zhenyang Luo: Nanjing Forestry University
Yonghong Zhou: Jiangsu Co-Innovation Center of Efficient Processing and Utilization of Forest Resources
Puyou Jia: Jiangsu Co-Innovation Center of Efficient Processing and Utilization of Forest Resources

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract 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.

Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-52850-0

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