Trends in Polymer Degradation Across All Scales

Abstract The development of sustainable plastic materials will be flanked with conscious resource management, waste recovery frameworks, and social change. Nonetheless, developing strategies toward controlled polymer degradation remains a key challenge—whether as a failsafe mechanism for materials that escape the resource recovery cycle, or where distinct degradation pathways are required for specific applications such as in the biomedical realm. This perspective highlights recent trends, challenges, and future strategies on three levels: 1) On the materials level, by the incorporation of enzymes into polymer materials that catalyze polymer degradation under benign conditions; 2) On the domain level, crystalline segments of polymer materials are often inert, even to enzymatically catalyzed degradation. Gaining an understanding of the mode of interaction between enzymes and polymer chains is key to controlling degradation of all polymer morphologies within materials. Processive depolymerization mechanisms, where the enzyme binds polymer chain ends and depolymerizes along the chain are extremely promising for efficient polymer degradation; 3) On the molecular level, where polyesters exhibit enzymatic targets of ester bonds through their polymer backbone, poly(alkene)s c of all carbon backbones. To enable degradation of this most abundant class of polymers, strategies must be developed to incorporate enzymatic targets into the backbone.