Phenolic resins are industrially used in a wide range of applications from commodity and construction materials to high-technology aerospace industry. They are mainly produced from the reaction between phenolic compounds and formaldehyde. Nevertheless, formaldehyde is a highly volatile and hazardous compound, classified as a Carcinogenic, Mutagenic and Reprotoxic chemical (CMR). Vanillin is a bio-based and non-toxic aromatic aldehyde compound obtained from the abundant lignin resources. Also, its aromaticity is very interesting for the synthesis of phenolic resins with high thermal stability. However, because of the relatively low reactivity of its aldehyde function toward phenolic compounds, it has never been used to synthesize phenolic resins.<br/>We developed innovative reactions for the functionalization of vanillin with a platform approach. Hence, we designed new bio-based aromatic aldehyde compounds from vanillin. We studied reactivity owing to the Hammet theory. It allowed us to propose innovative compounds with an improved reactivity toward phenolic compounds. We designed vanillin-based aldehyde structures that lead to highly cross-linked phenolic resins with high aromatic densities. We have obtained phenolic resins from substituted vanillin, thus without the use of any aldehyde compound classified as CMR. The analytical tests confirmed that those bio-based resins exhibit very high levels of performance with high thermal stability and high rigidity properties.

Substitution of formaldehyde in phenolic thermosets with innovative and bio-based lignin-to-vanillin derived compounds

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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