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Transforming how plastics are made, unmade, and remade through innovative research and diverse partnerships that together foster environmental stewardship is critically important to a sustainable future. Designing, preparing, and implementing polymers derived from renewable resources for a wide range of advanced applications that promote future economic development, energy efficiency, and environmental sustainability are all central to these efforts. In this Chemical Reviews contribution, we take a comprehensive, integrated approach to summarize important and impactful contributions to this broad research arena. The Review highlights signature accomplishments across a broad research portfolio and is organized into four wide-ranging research themes that address the topic in a comprehensive manner: Feedstocks, Polymerization Processes and Techniques, Intended Use, and End of Use. We emphasize those successes that benefitted from collaborative engagements across disciplinary lines.

Lithium-metal anode has fundamental problems concerning formation and growth of lithium dendrites, which prevents practical applications of next generation of high-capacity lithium-metal batteries. The synergistic combination of solid polymer electrolyte (SPE) crosslinked with naturally occurring terpenes and lithium-powder anode is promising solution to resolve the dendrite issues by substituting conventional liquid electrolyte/separator and lithium-foil anode system. A series of SPEs based on polysiloxane crosslinked with natural terpenes are prepared by facile thiol-ene click reaction under mild condition and the structural effect of terpene crosslinkers on electrochemical properties is studied. Lithium powder with large surface area is prepared by droplet emulsion technique (DET) and used as anode material. The effect of the physical state of electrolyte (solid/liquid) and morphology of lithium-metal anode (powder/foil) on dendrite growth behavior is systematically studied. The synergistic combination of SPE and lithium-powder anode suggests an effective solution to suppress the dendrite growth owing to the formation of a stable solid-electrolyte interface (SEI) layer and delocalized current density., (© 2017 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)

Metal batteries have been emerging as next‐generation battery systems by virtue of ultrahigh theoretical specific capacities and low reduction potentials of metallic anodes. However, significant concerns regarding the uncontrolled metallic dendrite growth accompanied by safety hazards and short lifespan have impeded practical applications of metal batteries. Although a great deal of effort has been pursued to highlight the thermodynamic origin of dendrite growth and a variety of experimental methodologies for dendrite suppression, the roles of polymer materials in suppressing the dendrite growth have been underestimated. This review aims to give a state‐of‐the‐art overview of contemporary dendrite‐suppressing polymer materials from the electro‐chemo‐mechanical viewpoint of macromolecular design, including i) homogeneous distribution of metal ion flux, ii) mechanical blocking of metal dendrites, iii) tailoring polymer structures, and iv) modulating the physical configuration of polymer membranes. Judiciously tailoring electro‐chemo‐mechanical properties of polymer materials provides virtually unlimited opportunities to afford safe and high‐performance metal battery systems by resolving problematic dendrite issues. Transforming these rational design strategies into building dendrite‐suppressing polymer materials and exploiting them towards polymer electrolytes, separators, and coating materials hold the key to realizing safe, dendrite‐free, and long‐lasting metal battery systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the variations in their pore characteristics and heterogeneity, the carbonization process of carboxylate‐functionalized polymers of intrinsic microporosity (PIM‐COOH) is investigated and the resulted membranes are tested for water treatment. The four distinct types of sub‐nanosized membranes with different oxygen‐to‐carbon ratios are prepared at four different temperatures: the pristine polymer membrane, crosslinked membrane via thermal decarboxylation, amorphous carbon membrane, and graphitic carbon membrane. Notably, the sub‐1 nm micropores of all the heat‐treated samples that do not exhibit a broadening pore size distribution are still retained. Nanofiltration performance is investigated using an aqueous MgSO4 solution (2000 ppm), pure water, and a series of the defect‐free, sub‐1 nm microporous membranes. While retaining the salt rejection, the water flux of the membranes increases with the pyrolysis temperature owing to their low friction property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) for all-solid-state lithium-ion batteries are prepared by simple one-pot polymerization induced by ultraviolet (UV) light using poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate (PEGMA) as an ion-conducting monomeric unit and tannic acid (TA)-based crosslinking agent and plasticizer. The crosslinking agent and plasticizer based on natural resources are obtained from the reaction of TA with glycidyl methacrylate and glycidyl poly(ethylene glycol), respectively. Dimensionally stable free-standing SPE having a large ionic conductivity of 5.6x10-4 S cm-1 at room temperature can be obtained by the polymerization of PEGMA into P(PEGMA) with a very small amount (0.1 wt%) of the crosslinking agent and 2.0 wt% of the plasticizer. The ionic conductivity value of SPE with a crosslinked structure is one order of magnitude larger than that of linear P(PEGMA) in the waxy state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]