A discarded plastic bottle may one day help power an electric vehicle, smartphone, or renewable energy storage system. Researchers at Penn State have developed a method to convert waste polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic into highly ordered synthetic graphite, a critical material used in lithium-ion batteries. The breakthrough could simultaneously address growing demand for battery materials and the mounting challenge of plastic waste management.
In a study published in the journal Diamond and Related Materials, researchers demonstrated that waste PET plastic can be transformed into high-quality synthetic graphite with a highly organized crystal structure. The resulting graphite exhibited large, well-ordered crystallites—microscopic regions where carbon layers are precisely aligned—surpassing the structural ordering found in commercial natural graphite samples.
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