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Recent advances in designing high-performance and enzymatically degradable plastics.
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This review summarizes recent research, mainly since 2020, on designing plastics that break down through enzymes while still performing well for practical use. It covers methods like chemical design, physical blending, and molecular interactions used to balance plastic strength with the ability to biodegrade.
Plastics have become indispensable in modern life, yet their end-of-life waste continues to accumulate, causing severe environmental pollution and posing risks to ecosystems and human health. This urgent challenge has driven the development of sustainable plastics as alternatives to conventional persistent plastics, among which biodegradable plastics are particularly promising. Owing to their reduced environmental footprint and their ability to undergo mild biodegradation mediated by efficient enzymes, biodegradable plastics have attracted increasing attention from both academia and industry in recent years. Nevertheless, their practical implementation remains constrained by the persistent trade-off between material performance and degradability. Therefore, the rational design of biodegradable plastics that simultaneously combine high performance and enzymatic degradability is essential for improving their practicality and sustainability, thereby alleviating plastic pollution and advancing a circular plastics economy. In this review, we discuss recent advances, mainly since 2020, in achieving high-performance and enzymatically degradable plastics through chemical design, physical blending, and supramolecular interactions.
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Research digests by email
When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.