Although depolymerization methods for various commodity plastics and several engineering plastics have been developed, such methods for robust super engineering plastics that have very high heat and chemical resistance are nearly unexplored. Here, the authors report the catalytic depolymerization-like chemical decomposition of oxyphenylene-based super engineering plastics such as polyetheretherketone, polysulfone, and polyetherimide using thiols via selective carbon–oxygen main chain cleavage to form monomer-type molecules, namely electron-deficient arenes with sulfur functional groups and bisphenols.
- Yasunori Minami
- Sae Imamura
- Masaru Yoshida
