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Updated: Sep 23, 2025

Depolymerizable Olefinic Polymers Based on Fused-Ring Cyclooctene Monomers
Published on: December 16, 2022
Towards Upcycling Biomass-Derived Crosslinked Polymers with Light
Ravichandranath Singathi1, Ramya Raghunathan1, Retheesh Krishnan2
1Center for Photochemical Science and Department of Chemistry, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH 43403, USA.
Abstract:
Photodegradable, recyclable, and renewable, crosslinked polymers from bioresources show promise towards developing a sustainable strategy to address the issue of plastics degradability and recyclability. Photo processes are not widely exploited for upcycling polymers in spite of the potential to have spatial and temporal control of the degradation in addition to being a green process. In this report we highlight a methodology in which biomass-derived crosslinked polymers can be programmed to degrade at ≈300 nm with ≈60 % recovery of the monomer. The recovered monomer was recycled back to the crosslinked polymer.
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