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Plastic polymers split into reusable monomers using an electrical heating method

An innovative approach has been developed to break down plastic polymers into their monomer building blocks. It uses a continuous melting, wicking, vaporization and reaction process in a porous carbon-bilayer structure, and can convert two model plastic polymers to their monomers at high yields without a catalyst.

This is a summary of: Dong, Q. et al. Depolymerization of plastics by means of electrified spatiotemporal heating. Nature 616, 488–494 (2023).

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00947-9

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