Design of alternative routes to todays commercial plastics are being sought to achieve numerous goals, including more well-defined structures and architectures, intricate functionality and/or more sustainable products from renewable resources. In this presentation focus is on designing functional green biobased polyamides (PAs) and polyurethanes (PURs) utilizing ring-opening reactions as a driving force in their synthesis, while achieving the targeted structure-property relationships. The PURs are debated and several methodologies to achieve isocyanate free PUR have been proposed and developed. One such methodology is the ring-opening of carbonates with diamines, which can be tailored to afford materials with high or low urethane density mimicking the PURs on the market today. By adopting the same fundamental chemistry, that is aminolysis, we synthesized biobased and isocyanate free PUR gels and demonstrated their function as antibacterial gels. Ring-opening aminolysis was also utilized to form strong metal adsorbers for waste water treatment, via the reaction of amines of different structures with a biobased sugar derived lactone. A synthesis route to fiber forming linear polyamides was also developed, utilizing comparably mild reaction conditions and ring-opening aminolysis condensation of a biobased dilactone with a variety of diamines as the reaction pathway. Well-defined and purely amide functional PAs were synthesized with fiber forming ability and thermal properties matching their oil-based analogues.

Ring-opening reactions to functional polyamides and polyurethanes

2019 Spring National Meeting

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