Precise Structural Design for Chemically Recyclable Polymers

The global production and consumption of plastics generate vast amounts of waste, creating a pressing challenge for sustainable management. Varieties of solutions have been developed to convert discarded plastics into valuable resources, which can be primarily categorized into mechanical and chemical approaches. This review focuses on chemically recyclable polymers, with a particular emphasis on recent progress in precise chemical structural design, aiming at enabling or enhancing the recyclability of polymers. We first examine strategies for endowing linear polymers with recyclability, including the incorporation of renewable linkages, the redesign of monomers with tailored recyclability, and the chemical transformation of otherwise unrecyclable polymers. Precision chemistry provides a versatile toolkit to balance the often-conflicting requirements of material stability and recyclability. At last, we discuss recycling strategies for traditionally nonrecyclable polymer networks, with particular attention to covalent adaptable networks (CANs) that exploit dynamic covalent bonds.