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Well-Defined Heterocatalysts for Plastic Upcycling: From Design to Applications
Original title: Well‐Defined Heterocatalysts for Plastic Upcycling: From Design to Applications
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This review paper rounds up scientific progress on special catalysts (tiny engineered materials) designed to break down plastic waste into reusable materials, rather than letting it pile up in landfills or break into microplastics that pollute our water, food, and bodies. While this research is more about chemistry and engineering than direct health testing, better plastic-recycling technology could eventually mean less plastic waste degrading into the microplastic particles increasingly found in human blood, organs, and even placentas. The catalysts described here aren't ready for widespread use yet — the paper focuses on lab-level design principles and flags remaining challenges like scaling
The global plastic pollution issues demand transformative upcycling technologies. As a kind of advanced material, well-defined heterocatalysts (WDHCs), which encompass well-defined nanoparticles, sub-nanoclusters, and atomically dispersed single-atom catalysts, have been widely employed in the chemical transformation of various waste plastics, showing high performance due to their unique structures. This review article summarizes advances on WDHCs for plastic upcycling, focusing on the structure-activity relationship of WDHCs and catalytic mechanisms. A framework of rational design for various WDHCs is first established, concentrating on the strategic engineering of metal centers, coordination environments, and support interfaces. Subsequently, the applications of WDHCs in catalyzing degradation of plastics via thermo-, photo-, and thermo-electronic strategies are introduced in sequence, with emphasis on mechanistic insights and structure-activity relationships of WDHCs. A critical assessment of catalyst stability, deactivation pathways, and performance in realistic mixed-plastic feeds is integrated throughout. Finally, the challenges related to scalable synthesis of catalysts and their stability, together with process integration, are addressed, offering perspectives on the development of sustainable and industrially viable plastic upcycling technologies. This work aims to serve as a foundational reference and a design guide for the next generation of high-performance WDHCs in enabling a circular economy of post-consumer plastics.
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