Polyethylene-like materials with built-in circularity: revealing fundamental design principals

In circular bioeconomy polymer materials need to be designed for specific and managed end-of-life scenarios that will prevent waste accumulation.

Polyethylene-like polyesters and other long-chain aliphatic polymers have arisen as potential future materials with chemical and mechanical recyclability. They are also advocated as potentially biodegradable alternatives to polyethylene. Surprisingly the biodegradation of these materials is basically an unexplored area.

Without any structural manipulation the degradation rate is expected to be low due to low content of ester groups and hydrophobicity of these materials.

We aim to systematically study and establish the structural limitation for hydrolysis and biodegradation to take place and how these processes can be manipulated by incorporation of weak linkages or weak segments to facilitate release of degradable oligomers. We further aim to develop novel polyethylene-like materials with pH-or UV-triggered reversible bonds.

This is a new approach to polyethylene-like materials, targeting products that can be repeatedly depolymerized and repolymerized to enable chemical recycling under very mild conditions.

In summary the goal is to reveal fundamental insights into structure-property-degradation relationships and material-environment interactions to design materials for one or ideally several facile circular pathways, while retaining desirable material properties during the use phase.