Photodegradable Polar Functionalized Polyethylenes

The degradation of plastics has attracted much attention from the global community. Polyethylenes (PEs) as the most abundant synthetic plastics are mostly studied. PE is non-degradable and non-polar because of the sole presence of the pure hydrocarbon components. Concurrent incorporation of both in-chain cleavable and functional groups into the PE chain is an effective pathway to overcome the non-degradable and non-polar issue; however, the method for achieving this pathway remains elusive. Here, we report the strictly nonalternating (>99%) terpolymerization of ethylene with CO and fundamental polar monomers via a coordination–insertion mechanism using late transition metal catalysts, which effectively prevents the formation of undesired chelates originating from both co-monomers under a low CO concentration. High-molecular-weight linear PEs with both in-chain isolated keto (>99%) and main-chain functional groups are prepared. The incorporation of the key low-content isolated keto groups makes PEs photodegradable while retains their desirable bulk material properties, and the introduction of polar functional groups considerably improves their surface properties.