Time-resolved, in situ MRI and NMR of polydiketoenamine (PDK) acidolysis

Moving toward a circular plastics economy is a vital aspect of global resource management. Chemical recycling of plastics ensures high-value monomers can be recovered from depolymerized plastic waste, thus enabling circular manufacturing. However, to increase chemical recycling throughput in materials recovery facilities, the present understanding of polymer transport, diffusion, swelling, and heterogeneous deconstruction kinetics must be systematized to allow industrial-scale process design, spanning molecular to macroscopic regimes. To develop a framework for designing depolymerization processes, we examined acidolysis of circular polydiketoenamine (PDK) elastomers. We employed magnetic resonance to monitor spatially resolved observables in situ, then evaluated these data with a fractal method that treats nonlinear depolymerization kinetics. This approach delineated the roles played by network architecture and reaction medium on depolymerization outcomes, yielding parameters that faci..., , , # Time-resolved, *in situ* MRI and NMR of polydiketoenamine (PDK) acidolysis

This dataset includes time-resolved T2-weighted spin echo images, time-resolved pulsed gradient spin echoes (PGSEs) to report the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC), and time-resolved CPMG echo train decays to report T2 for three crosslinker size variants of polydiketoenamine (PDK) (T403, T300, and T5000) in three different 5 M acids (HBr, HCl, and H2SO4). Images are taken in the axial orientation for 8 mm cylinders of PDK contained in a 10 mm NMR tube, with c.a. 1 cc of acid surrounding the polymer.

## Description of the data and file structure

1\. [in the folders with names starting with \"PD_\"] Imaging and diffusion were performed on a Pure Devices benchtop research instrument using the company's openMatlab software. Data for each unique sample (PDK variant/acid combination) is contained within a folder named GUI_PDK_XX_YY where \"XX\" denotes the crosslinker size of the PDK, and \"YY\" denotes the acid. W...