Maksso I, Samanta RC, Zhan Y, Zhang K, Warratz S, Ackermann L. Polymer up-cycling by mangana-electrocatalytic C(sp
3)-H azidation without directing groups.
Chem Sci 2023;
14:8109-8118. [PMID:
37538824 PMCID:
PMC10395267 DOI:
10.1039/d3sc02549g]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/19/2023] [Accepted: 07/04/2023] [Indexed: 08/05/2023] Open
Abstract
The chemical up-cycling of polymers into value-added materials offers a unique opportunity to place plastic waste in a new value chain towards a circular economy. Herein, we report the selective up-cycling of polystyrenes and polyolefins to C(sp3)-H azidated materials under electrocatalytic conditions. The functionalized polymers were obtained with high retention of mass average molecular mass and high functionalization through chemo-selective mangana-electrocatalysis. Our strategy proved to be broadly applicable to a variety of homo- and copolymers. Polyethylene, polypropylene as well as post-consumer polystyrene materials were functionalized by this approach, thereby avoiding the use of hypervalent-iodine reagents in stoichiometric quantities by means of electrocatalysis. This study, hence, represents a chemical oxidant-free polymer functionalization by electro-oxidation. The electrocatalysis proved to be scalable, which highlights its unique feature for a green hydrogen economy by means of the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER).
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