„Für immer“-Chemikalien können mit cleverer Chemie zerstört werden – testen Sie diese Techniken jetzt außerhalb des Labors

Seed Statement:

The carbon–fluorine (C–F) bond is one of the strongest in organic chemistry, requiring huge amounts of energy to break down, at huge expense. But researchers describe two low-energy ways to overcome the C–F bond. Both methods combine a catalyst with some relatively simple chemistry driven by the energy of visible light. In each case, the catalyst absorbs light that then triggers a reaction.

Researchers from Colorado State University use this absorbed energy to reduce the C–F bond to carbon–hydrogen — albeit not in Teflon. In another study at University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, researchers use this energy to break the bond and the overall molecule down to smaller constituent parts, in temperatures as low as 40 °C.