Abstract
Sustainable gas barrier materials, such as polyglycolide, poly(l-lactide), and poly(ethylene 2,5-furandicarboxylate) are important alternatives to traditional plastics used for packaging where low gas permeability is beneficial. However, high degrees of crystallinity in these materials can lead to undesirably low material toughness. We report poly(ester-amide)s derived from glycolide and diamines exhibiting both high toughness and desirable gas barrier properties. These sustainable poly(ester-amide)s were synthesized from glycolide-derived diamidodiols and diacids. To understand the structure-property relationships of the poly(ester-amide)s, polymers with different numbers of methylene groups were compared with respect to thermal, mechanical, and gas barrier properties. As the number of methylene groups between ester groups increased in the even-numbered series, the melting temperature decreased and oxygen permeability increased. We also found that these polymers are readily degradable under neutral, acidic, and basic hydrolytic conditions. These high-performance poly(ester-amide)s are promising sustainable alternatives to conventional gas barrier materials.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 3882-3891 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Polymer Chemistry |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue number | 26 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 23 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by National Science Foundation Center for Sustainable Polymers at the University of Minnesota, which is a National Science Foundation-supported Center for Chemical Innovation (CHE-1901635) and Braskem. The authors thank Prof. Thomas Hoye, Dr Wui Yarn Chan and Dr Christopher DeRosa at the University of Minnesota, Dr Jay Werber at the University of Toronto, and Dr Jason Clark at Braskem for helpful discussions. The authors also thank Kris Bednarchuk and Joel Fischer at Ametek and Donald Massey at Clemson University for assistance with measurements of oxygen transmission rates. The authors thank Dr Victor Young Jr. at University of Minnesota and Steven Weigand at Argonne National Laboratory for X-ray experiments assistance. WAXS experiments were performed at the Sector 5 of the Advanced Photon Source at the DuPont-Northwestern-Dow Collaborative Access Team (DND-CAT), supported by E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., Northwestern University, and the U.S. DOE under contract no. DE-AC02-06CH11357.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Royal Society of Chemistry.