Polyolefin compatibilizers, which often include statistical and block copolymers, aim to prevent phase separation in post-consumer resins (PCR) of mixed polymer type. As the US aims to increase recycling beyond the 10% average PCR material from consumer feedstocks, new strategies and measurements are required for increasingly complex mixtures of used plastics. Quantifying the molar mass, chemical composition, and architectural distributions of these materials is crucial for determining accurate structure-property-performance relationships and to optimize design of compatibilizers for mechanical recycling. This talk will highlight efforts to make systematically varied families of model polyolefins based on ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) of 1-alkyl-<i>trans</i>-cyclooctenes with successive hydrogenation to compare the dilute solution properties of varied branch length, branch frequency, and copolymer composition. Characterization of these model materials via high temperature size exclusion chromatography yield information about the distribution of molar masses, chain branching, and dilute solution properties. With this information, further characterization of these materials in bulk systems can be studied and results correlated to homogeneous, well characterized materials. Furthermore, for materials designed to degrade, where recovery and recycling is not practical, understanding environmental degradation kinetics on polymer topology and chemistry are crucial to material design. We will also highlight efforts in our laboratory to study environmental aging of polyolefins with systematic study of degradation with material depth in efforts to develop improved degradation models as benchmarks for next generation material comparison.

Systematic variation of polyolefin sequences to support measurements for materials circularity and end of life concerns

ACS Fall 2021

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