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Rates of transesterification in epoxy-thiol vitrimers.

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Gablier, Alexandra 
Saed, Mohand O 
Terentjev, Eugene M  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3517-6578

Abstract

Vitrimers, an important subset of dynamically crosslinked polymer networks, have many technological applications for their excellent properties, and the ability to be re-processed through plastic flow above the so-called vitrification temperature. We report a simple and efficient method of generating such adaptive crosslinked networks relying on transesterification for their bond exchange by utilising the 'click' chemistry of epoxy and thiols, which also has the advantage of a low glass transition temperature. We vary the chemical structure of thiol spacers to probe the effects of concentration and the local environment of ester groups on the macroscopic elastic-plastic transition. The thermal activation energy of transesterification bond exchange is determined for each chemical structure, and for a varying concentration of catalyst, establishing the conditions for the optimal, and for the suppressed bond exchange. However, we also discover that the temperature of elastic-plastic transition is strongly affected by the stiffness (dynamic rubber modulus) of the network, with softer networks having a much lower vitrification temperature even when their bond-exchange activation energy is higher. This combination of chemical and physical control factors should help optimise the processability of vitrimer plastics.

Description

Keywords

cond-mat.soft, cond-mat.soft

Journal Title

Soft Matter

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1744-683X
1744-6848

Volume Title

16

Publisher

Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
Sponsorship
European Research Council (786659)
ERC h2020 AdG "APRA" (786659).