Quantum tunnelling in hydrogen atom transfer brings uncertainty to polymer degradation

The low degradability of common polymers composed of light elements, results in a serious impact on the environment, which has become an urgent problem to be solved. As the reverse process of monomer polymerization, what deviates degradation from the idealized sequential depolymerization process, thereby bringing strange degradation products or even hindering further degradation? This is a key issue at the atomic level that must be addressed. Herein, we reveal that hydrogen atom transfer (HAT) during degradation, which is usually attributed to the thermal effect, unexpectedly exhibits a strong high-temperature tunnelling effect. This gives a possible answer to the above question. High-precision first-principles calculations show that, in various possible HAT pathways, lower energy barrier and stronger tunnelling effect make the HAT reaction related to the active end of the polymer occur more easily. In particular, although the energy barrier of the HAT reaction is only of 0.01 magnitude different from depolymerization, the tunnelling probability of the former can be 14~32 orders of magnitude greater than that of the latter. Furthermore, chain scission following HAT will lead to a variety of products other than monomers. Our work highlights that quantum tunnelling may be an important source of uncertainty in degradation and will provide a direction for regulating the polymer degradation process.