The development of bio-based epoxy resins from aliphatic
biomass
and lignin has rapidly increased over the past few decades. While
thermal curing of such monomers with polyfunctional amines and anhydrides
has been intensively discussed in literature, surprisingly, their
polymerization behavior using alcohols as co-curing agents and the
resulting mechanical properties have not been investigated in detail
up to now. Herein, the polymerization mode of bio-based epoxides with
alcohols using imidazoles as catalysts was studied via
1H-NMR analysis, revealing a controlled alternating co-polymerization
between difunctional epoxy and alcohol monomers. Furthermore, differential
scanning calorimetry analysis was used to obtain the theoretical heat
of polymerization (∼100 kJ mol–1) of multifunctional
monomers and the formulations exhibited high storage stabilities of
up to 28 days. By varying the core structure and functionality of
the epoxy monomers, high-performance thermosets with a tunable T
G (0–110 °C) and high tensile toughness
of up to 18 MJ m–3 were obtained. These performances
show potential for the application of bio-based epoxy networks as
coatings for key industrial sections such as automotive technologies.
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