More things come to breakable bonds who wait…

Congratulations to Yangju, whose paper “Enhanced Polymer Mechanical Degradation through Mechanochemically Unveiled Lactonization” has been accepted for publication in Nature Communications and highlighted by the journal editor! The mechanical degradation of polymers is typically limited to a single chain scission per triggering chain stretching event, and the loss of stress transfer that results from the scission limits the extent of degradation that can be achieved. Here, the mechanically triggered ring-opening of a [4.2.0]bicyclooctene mechanophore sets up a delayed, force-free cascade lactonization that results in order-of-magnitude greater reduction in molecular weight than can be obtained by direct scission.