How lasers and 2D materials could solve the world’s plastic problem

A global research team led by Texas Engineers has developed a way to blast molecules in plastics and other materials with a laser to break them down into their smallest pieces for future reuse.

The discovery, which involves placing these materials on top of two-dimensional materials called transition metal dichalcogenides and then igniting them, has the potential to improve the way we dispose of plastics that are nearly impossible to break down with today’s technologies.

“By exploiting these unique reactions, we can explore new pathways for transforming environmental pollutants into valuable and reusable chemicals, contributing to the development of a more sustainable and circular economy,” said Yuebing Zheng, professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Walker of the Cockrell School of Engineering. Engineer and one of the project leaders.

“This discovery has important implications for addressing environmental challenges and advancing the field of green chemistry.”

The research was recently published in Nature Communications. The team includes researchers from the University of California, Berkeley; Tohoku University in Japan; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Baylor University; and Pennsylvania State University.

Plastic pollution has become a global environmental crisis, with millions of tonnes of plastic waste piling up in landfills and oceans each year. Conventional methods of plastic degradation are often energy intensive, environmentally harmful and ineffective. The researchers envision using this new discovery to develop efficient plastic recycling technologies to reduce pollution.

The researchers used low-powered light to break the plastic’s chemical bond and create new chemical bonds that turned the materials into luminescent carbon droplets. Carbon-based nanomaterials are in high demand due to their multiple capabilities, and these dots can potentially be used as memory storage devices in next-generation computing devices.

“It’s exciting to potentially take plastic that on its own could never break down and turn it into something useful for many different industries,” said Jingang Li, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley who began the research at UT.

The specific reaction is called CH activation, where the carbon-hydrogen bonds in an organic molecule are selectively broken and converted into a new chemical bond. In this research, two-dimensional materials catalyzed this reaction that led to the conversion of hydrogen molecules into gas. This paved the way for carbon molecules to bond with each other to form information storage points.

Further research and development is required to optimize the light-driven CH activation process and scale it up for industrial applications. However, this study represents an important step forward in the search for sustainable solutions for plastic waste management.

The light-driven CH activation process demonstrated in this study can be applied to many long-chain organic compounds, including polyethylene and surfactants commonly used in nanomaterial systems.