The development of vitrimers, dynamic covalent bonds
cross-liked
polymers via the associative exchange mechanism, offers a feasible
way to address the recycling issue of traditional chemically cross-linked
polyethylene (PE). However, it is still a great challenge to simultaneously
achieve recyclability and high performance through a route that is
environmentally friendly and easy to scale up. In this work, low-density
(LD) PE vitrimers cross-linked by β-hydroxy ester bonds were
successfully obtained via reactive processing between polyethylene-co-glycidyl methacrylate (PE-GMA) and decanedioic acid (DA).
The high reaction efficiency of epoxy and carboxy groups leads to
a high gel content of 84.51%. The activation energy (E
a) of the transesterification reaction is calculated to
be 111.33 kJ·mol–1. Thanks to the high E
a and cross-link density, the obtained (LD)
PE vitrimer exhibits a superior tensile strength of 20.41 MPa and
an elongation at break of 800.16%, which is one of the highest values
among the currently reported PE vitrimers fabricated by reactive processing.
Moreover, the (LD) PE vitrimers have good creep resistance, heat resistance,
and electrical insulation, thus showing a great potential to be used
in the field of cable insulation.