Salt-templated transformation of waste plastics into single-atom catalysts for environmental and energy applications
Shiying Ren, Xin Xu, Kunsheng Hu, Shuang Zhong, Yingjie Gao, Bernt Johannessen, Wei Ren, Hongyu Zhou, Zhong‐Shuai Zhu, Yidi Chen, Xiaoguang Duan, Shaobin Wang
Abstract
Upcycling plastic waste into single-atom catalysts (SACs) not only offers a sustainable solution for plastic waste management but also yields valuable functional materials for catalytic applications. Here, we report a simple and scalable method to transform various types of plastics, including polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, polyethylene terephthalate, polyvinyl chloride, and their mixtures, into a diversity of porous SACs with different coordination chemistry and their excellent applications in a variety of catalytic reactions. Lamellar transition metal chloride salts (Ni, Fe, Co, Mn, and Cu) are employed as a template and catalyst for confined carbonization of plastics into layered SACs. An appropriate plastic-to-salt ratio is the key factor for preventing metal agglomeration during SAC synthesis. The SACs demonstrate exceptional catalytic activity in oxidative degradation of a range of persistent organic pollutants for water treatment and excel in electrocatalytic systems such as oxygen/nitrogen reduction reactions and lithium-sulfur batteries. This technique provides a versatile, scalable, and efficient strategy for upcycling solid wastes into high-performance materials for environmental and energy catalysis. Converting plastic waste into single-atom catalysts (SACs) provides both a sustainable approach to waste management and a source of valuable catalytic materials. Here, the authors present a straightforward, scalable method to upcycle plastic waste into diverse porous SACs and showcase their outstanding performance across multiple catalytic reactions.