Lignin, as a precious resource given to mankind by nature with
abundant functional aromatic structures, has drawn much attention
in the recent decade from academia to industry worldwide, aiming at
harvesting aromatic compounds from this abundant and renewable natural
polymer resource. How to efficiently depolymerize lignin to easy-to-handle
aromatic monomers is the precondition of lignin utilization. Many
strategies/methods have been developed to effectively degrade lignin
into monomers, such as the traditional methods of pyrolysis, gasification,
liquid-phase reforming, solvolysis, chemical oxidation, hydrogenation,
reduction, acidolysis, alkaline hydrolysis, alcoholysis, as well as
the newly developed redox-neutral process, biocatalysis, and combinatorial
strategies. Therefore, there is a strong demand to systemically summarize
these developed strategies and methods and reveal the internal transformation
principles of the lignin. Focusing on the topic of lignin depolymerization
to aromatic chemicals, this review reorganizes and categorizes the
strategies/methods according to their mechanisms, orbiting the center
of critical intermediates during the lignin linkage transformation,
which includes the critical anionic intermediates, cationic intermediates,
organometallic intermediates, organic molecular intermediates, aryl
cation radical intermediates, and neutral radical intermediates. The
corresponding introduction involves the generation and the transformation
chemistry of the critical intermediates via the corresponding C–H/O–H/C–C/C–O
chemical bond transformations, leading to the cleavage of the C–C/C–O
linkage bonds. Accompanying the brief introduction of lignin chemistry
and the final concluding remarks and perspectives on lignin depolymerization,
this review aims to provide a current research process of lignin depolymerization,
which may provide useful suggestions for this vigorous research field.