Experimental Physics

Marc A. Hillmyer

Department of Chemistry, University of Minnesota.

Polyolefins are ubiquitous. They are lightweight, strong, and stable. These features render them useful in countless applications. Unfortunately, these attributes also contribute to the accumulation of persistent plastic waste in the environment. While polyolefins can be mechanically recycled, often this results in an inferior product and is in part the reason that only a small percentage of polyolefin products are effectively recycled. We have embarked on an effort to prepare polyolefins with functional groups at their chain ends. These telechelic polyolefins can be stitched together to form high molar mass plastics and thermosets. By virtue of the synthetic pathway used to make these materials, we generate products that include weak links along the backbones of the polymer chains. These links can be chemically cleaved to quantitatively deconstruct the material and allow for efficient chemical recycling back to the starting telechelic polymers that can be subsequently repolymerized. Our approach takes advantage of a tandem catalysis strategy that is perfectly atom economic and readily scalable. In this lecture I will discuss the preparation of the telechelic polyolefins and their use in the preparation of degradable polyolefin-based plastics and thermosets. I will also report on their materials properties, scalability, and recyclability.