New Submission Nanoplastics and Volatile Formation During Accelerated Degradation of Polypropylene

Polymers are known to spontaneously generate microplastics (1 μm–3 mm) and nanoplastics (10 nm–1 μm) upon exposure to environmental stressors such as heat, light, and mechanical stress, which, when released into the environment, have detrimental effects on human and animal health. In this work, we demonstrate the formation of nanoplastics when polypropylene is subjected to temperatures both below its melting point (150 °C) and above it (200 °C and 240 °C), as a function of reaction time up to 24 h. The predominant mechanism driving their formation is chain scission, which results in the release of functionalized polymer fragments as nanoplastics and small molecules as volatile organic compounds. Variations in reaction parameters were found to influence the thermal stability, crystallinity, melting temperature, crystalline structure, and chemical structure of the resulting nanoplastics.