Chemically Recyclable Polymer System Based on Nucleophilic Aromatic Ring-Opening Polymerization

• Published in: Journal of the American Chemical Society 2023-06, Vol.145 (25), p.13950-13956
• Main Authors: Su, Yong-Liang, Yue, Liang, Tran, Huan, Xu, Mizhi, Engler, Anthony, Ramprasad, Rampi, Qi, H. Jerry, Gutekunst, Will R.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0002-7863; 1520-5126
• DOI: 10.1021/jacs.3c03455

The development of chemically recyclable polymers with desirable properties is a long-standing but challenging goal in polymer science. Central to this challenge is the need for reversible chemical reactions that can equilibrate at rapid rates and provide efficient polymerization and depolymerization cycles. Based on the dynamic chemistry of nucleophilic aromatic substitution (SNAr), we report a chemically recyclable polythioether system derived from readily accessible benzothiocane (BT) monomers. This system represents the first example of a well-defined monomer platform capable of chain-growth ring-opening polymerization through an SNAr manifold. The polymerizations reach completion in minutes, and the pendant functionalities are easily customized to tune material properties or render the polymers amenable to further functionalization. The resulting polythioether materials exhibit comparable performance to commercial thermoplastics and can be depolymerized to the original monomers in high yields.