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Stapler Strategies for Upcycling Mixed Plastics
Summary
Scientists developed small molecules that work alongside compatibilizing polymers to allow previously incompatible mixed plastics to be mechanically recycled together. The approach successfully maintained material properties through 20 recycling cycles and was tested on real post-consumer plastic waste.
Abstract Mechanical recycling is one of the simplest and most economical strategies to address ever-increasing plastic pollution, but it cannot be applied to immiscible mixed plastics and suffers from property deterioration after each cycle. By combining the amphiphilic block copolymer strategy and reactive compatibilization strategy, we designed a series of stapler strategies for compatibilizing/upcycling mixed plastics. First, various functionalized graft copolymers were accessed via different synthetic routes. Subsequently, the addition of a very small amount of stapler molecules induced a synergistic effect with the graft copolymers that improved the compatibility and mechanical properties of mixed plastics. These strategies were highly effective for various binary/ternary plastic systems, can be directly applied to post-consumer waste plastics, and, most importantly, permitted the recycling of plastic blends 20 times with minimal degradation in their mechanical properties.