Citation:
Yuehong Zhang, Vijay Kumar Thakur, Yuzhan Li, et al., Soybean‐oil‐based thermosetting resins with methacrylated vanillyl alcohol as bio‐based, low‐viscosity comonomer. Macromolecular Materials and Engineering, Volume 303, Issue 1, January 2018, Article number 1700278
Abstract:
A novel, bio-based, aromatic monomer (methacrylated vanillyl alcohol,
MVA), was synthesized using vanillyl alcohol and methacrylic anhydride
in the absence of solvents. The resulting MVA was characterized and used
as a sustainable reactive diluent to replace styrene in a maleinated acrylated
epoxidized soybean oil (MAESO) resin to produce novel thermosetting
resins via free radical polymerization. The influence of MVA loading (10 -
40%) on the viscosity, gelation time, curing extent, thermo-mechanical
properties, and tensile properties of the MAESO-MVA copolymer was
investigated. The synthesized MVA exhibited very low volatility relative
to styrene, which is beneficial for the development of construction material
with low or zero emission. With 40 wt% of MVA content in MAESO, a
significant reduction of system viscosity (over an order of magnitude) was
achieved. Increasing the MVA content accelerated the crosslinking reaction
rate and improved thermal and mechanical properties of the MAESO-MVA
system. The glass transition temperature increased with increasing MVA
content. Soxhlet extraction experiments showed that more than 90% of the
components were incorporated into the crosslinking network. The effect of
MVA purity on the properties of the resulting copolymer was also
investigated. MAESO-MVA copolymers prepared using high-purity MVA
exhibited higher degree of crosslinking.