Bitrimeroak: aldi bereko termoplastikoak eta termoegonkorrak diren polimeroak: Vitrimers: thermoplastics and thermoset polymers

Abstract

Polymers can be thermosets, thermoplastics or elastomers when classified by nature, the first being the most difficult to recycle. On the one hand, being the structure of thermostable polymers highly crosslinked, they present good physical-chemical properties, but they degrade in presence of heat, instead of melting or softening. On the other hand, thermoplastics have the possibility of softening and melting, and their physical-chemical properties are worse than thermostable ones. In sight of this, in an effort to get the thermoplastics recyclability and thermosets good mechanical-properties, vitrimers have been developed. polymeric materials with adaptive covalent networks, which make possible to retain mechanical properties through several recycling cycles. For this purpose, the covalent bonds between chains must be reversible, for example, the case of the imine groups of a Schiff base. Taking this into account, the vitrimer was synthesized from natural products and biocompatible epoxidized soy oil. For this purpose, the Schiff base has first been synthesized from two natural products: 4-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde (vanillin) and 1,4-butanediamine (putrescine) and subsequently crossed with epoxidized soybean oil. After performing several characterizations (thermal and mechanical) with this compound, its vitrimeric properties have been tested and it has been shown that it can be used to replace thermostable epoxy resins.