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Published on: November 21, 2017
Polymer up-cycling by mangana-electrocatalytic C(sp3)-H azidation without directing groups
Isaac Maksso1, Ramesh C Samanta1, Yifei Zhan2
1Institut für Organische und Biomolekulare Chemie and Wöhler Research Institute for Sustainable Chemistry (WISCh), Georg-August-Universität Tammannstraße 2 37077 Göttingen Germany lutz.ackermann@chemie.uni-goettingen.de.
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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