Berlin and Bonn chemists turn used silicone back into a raw building block

A Nature paper describes breaking silicone polymers down to dichlorosilane, an industrial monomer, rather than landfilling or burning them.

Researchers at TU Berlin and the University of Bonn report a way to take silicones apart into a reusable starting chemical. Using silylium-ion initiation and phosgene substitutes (and ultimately phosgene itself) as chlorinating reagents, the method cuts the Si–O–Si backbone under mild conditions and regenerates dichlorosilane. It is reported to work on linear and cyclic siloxanes, including commercial silicone oils and elastomers.

This matters because silicone waste now mostly goes to landfill, incineration, mechanical recycling or conversion to cyclic siloxanes. Returning to a true monomer would let durable silicone goods be made again from their own waste, reducing the need for virgin feedstock. It is still early research, and we have no data on yields, scale or cost.

The source is brief on detail: only the abstract is open, the paper is an early-access version, and the full results sit with Nature.

Source: Nature