麻豆淫院

Plastics pose a significant waste problem: many conventional plastics do not degrade, or do so only with great difficulty. This makes research into new plastics essential鈥攎aterials that retain useful properties but can also be deliberately broken down or recycled. Such innovations could lead to more sustainable materials, enabling the use of plastics in a way that conserves resources over the long term.

According to a published in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition, incorporating sulfur atoms into polymer chains makes them more degradable.

Sulfur atoms enhance the sustainability of polymers because the bonds between carbon and sulfur atoms are easier to break than the bonds between carbon and other carbon or oxygen atoms. This allows sulfur-containing plastics to degrade under relatively mild conditions. However, strategies for synthesizing these plastics are still underdeveloped, which hinders large-scale production.

A first step towards mass production has now been taken: an international research team, including members from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Texas A&M University, and the University of Bayreuth, has developed a method to test and compare various sulfur-containing building blocks for their suitability in plastic production.

"With our study, we were able to establish a predictive rule that indicates which sulfur-based building blocks yield perfectly structured and clean polymers鈥攁nd which do not," says Prof. Dr. Alex J. Plajer, Junior Professor of Macromolecular Chemistry at the University of Bayreuth.

Until now, the building blocks and reaction conditions used to produce these sulfur-containing plastics had to be specifically tailored and optimized for each combination of components.

"There was no blueprint for producing sustainable plastics with sulfur under standardized conditions," Plajer explains.

Using their new method, the researchers identified carbonyl sulfide as a particularly suitable sulfur-based building block for plastic production. Carbonyl sulfide reacts very reliably, forming long, uniformly structured polymer chains鈥攁nd it does so with minimal use of a catalyst to facilitate the chemical reaction. Additionally, the reaction produces very few unwanted by-products.

"Our findings are laying the foundation for the development of new, sustainable materials that can be broken down in a controlled manner," Plajer concludes.