Tae-Lim Choi obtained PhD from Caltech under supervision of Prof. Bob Grubbs in 2003 and conducted his post-doc research at UC Berkeley under guidance of Prof. Jean Frèchet until 2004. Since 2008, he started his independent career at Department of Chemistry, Seoul National University and promoted to a full professor in 2017. In 2022, he moved to ETH Zurich as a Professor of Polymer Chemistry. He recently received Arthur K. Doolittle Award from ACS, PMSE division in 2024.

2025 NASA Symp

Depolymerization of commercial polymethacrylates triggered by visible light

The reversion of polymers with C–C backbones to their monomers represents a promising path to alleviate the growing plastic waste stream. However, depolymerizing such stable materials remains a challenge, with state-of-the-art methods relying on “designer” polymers that are not commercially produced. Here, we report a main-chain-initiated, visible-light-triggered depolymerization directly applicable to commercial polymers. By in-situ generation of chlorine radicals directly from the solvent, near-quantitative depolymerization of polymethacrylates could be achieved regardless of their end-group and molecular weight.