Incorporating Biobased Monomers into a Terpolymer Dynamic Network

Global thermosets production in 2021 was about 49.2 million tons accounting for 12.6% of global plastic production, while the European one was about 6.9 million tons accounting for 12.1% of total plastic production. Thermosets are cross-linked materials with enhanced thermo-mechanical stability and better chemical, wear, and creep resistance properties than thermoplastics. Therefore, these network materials are employed in many advanced lightweight applications, such as aerospace, automotive, wind turbine, and thermal insulation. Unfortunately, they also have a drawback: they cannot be reshaped, reprocessed, or recycled. Dynamic covalent networks overcome this issue due to the presence of exchangeable chemical bonds activated by simple external stimuli, such as light or heat, making them fully reprocessable. The ever-increasing number of dynamic exchange mechanisms, coupled with the wide variety of monomers exploited to obtain polymer chains, enables the tailored synthesis of advanced materials with desired mechanical properties for specific applications. In this study, we present a new dynamic network formed through the dissociative amide-imide exchange mechanism on a terpolymer containing also a biobased monomer.