Towards Upcycling Biomass-Derived Crosslinked Polymers with Light.

Photodegradable, recyclable, and renewable, crosslinked polymers from bioresources show promise towards developing a sustainable strategy to address the issue of plastics degradability and recyclability. Photo processes are not widely exploited for upcycling polymers in spite of the potential to have spatial and temporal control of the degradation in addition to being a green process. In this report we highlight a methodology in which biomass-derived crosslinked polymers can be programmed to degrade at ≈300 nm with ≈60 % recovery of the monomer. The recovered monomer was recycled back to the crosslinked polymer.

Chemoselective Photoreaction of Enamides: Divergent Reactivity towards [3+2]-Photocycloaddition vs Paternò-Büchi Reaction.

Photoreaction of enamides tethered to a phenyl ketone leads to either [3+2]-photocycloaddition or Paternò-Büchi reaction. This divergence in chemical reactivity originating from the same excited state was dependent on the reaction temperature. At low temperatures the Paternò-Büchi reaction was preferred, whereas at higher temperatures there was preference toward formation of [3+2]-photoproduct.