Fig. 1: Representative routes of direct cracking of polyolefins to ethylene and propylene.

a, Conventional catalytic cracking of polyolefins to light olefins. b, Previous work using pulsed heating techniques to crack polyolefins to ethylene and/or propylene with or without catalysts28,29. c, Current work applying the KDRC strategy to yield ethylene and propylene from polyolefins. The KDRC strategy aligns butene and pentene formation with dimerization–β-scission, boosting ethylene and propylene yield.