Electrocatalytic CO₂ Upgrading to Biodegradable Plastic by Bromine-Assisted C₂H₄ Oxidation and Polymerization.

Authors

Maoyin Wang, Chen Wang, Mengqiu Xu, Yuhang Huang, Ruilin Wei, Hairui Ma, Boyu Hou, Cejun Hu, Guangyong Wang, Shuya Hao, Gengfeng Zheng

Published in

Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany). Pages e74880. Jul 28, 2026. Epub Jul 28, 2026.

Abstract

The electrochemical upgrading of carbon dioxide (CO₂) to long-chain value-added products has remained challenging due to the complex reaction pathways with sluggish carbon-carbon coupling kinetics. Although ethylene (C₂H₄), a major CO₂ electroreduction product, may serve as a potential alternative for the coupling and carbon-chain elongation, the efficient C₂H₄ oxidation under ambient conditions and selective control of the oxidation level still represent two main bottlenecks for realizing long-chain products. Herein, we demonstrate an efficient tandem electrochemical approach for synthesizing polyglycolic acid (PGA) from CO₂ via the bromine-assisted C₂H₄ oxidation, followed by polymerization under mild conditions. This process is enabled by the temperature-mediated electro-oxidation of C₂H₄ to bromoacetate, which overcomes the diffusion limitation imposed by the electrical double layer at room temperature. The resulting bromoacetate with sp²-hybridized carbon preferentially undergoes intermolecular nucleophilic attack, thus driving polymerization to PGA. This work presents a potential approach for converting CO₂ to biodegradable polyesters.

PMID:
42517247
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 28 Jul 2026.

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