Chemically Recyclable Polyolefin-Like Multiblock Polymers

Polyolefins are the most important and largest volume plastics produced. Unfortunately, the enormous use of plastics and lack of effective disposal or recycling options have created a plastic waste catastrophe. In this work, we report an approach to create chemically recyclable polyolefin-like materials with diverse mechanical properties through the construction of multiblock polymers from hard and soft oligomeric building blocks synthesized with ruthenium-mediated ring-opening metathesis polymerization of cyclooctenes. The multiblock polymers exhibit broad mechanical properties, spanning elastomers to plastomers to thermoplastics, while integrating a high melting transition temperature (Tm) and low glass transition temperature (Tg), making them suitable for use across diverse applications (Tm as high as 128 degrees C and Tg as low as -60 degrees C). After use, the different plastics can be combined and efficiently deconstructed back to the fundamental hard and soft building blocks for separation and repolymerization to realize a closed-loop recycling process.