2019, Schäfer, Pascal M., Dankhoff, Katja, Rothemund, Matthias, Ksiazkiewicz, Agnieszka N., Pich, Andrij, Schobert, Rainer, Weber, Birgit, Herres-Pawlis, Sonja

The synthesis of bio-based and biodegradable plastics is a hot topic in research due to growing environmental problems caused by omnipresent plastics. As a result, polylactide, which has been known for years, has seen a tremendous increase in industrial production. Nevertheless, the manufacturing process using the toxic catalyst Sn(Oct)2 is very critical. As an alternative, five zinc acetate complexes have been synthesized with Schiff base-like ligands that exhibit high activity in the ring-opening polymerization of non-purified lactide. The systems bear different side arms in the ligand scaffold. The influence of these substituents has been analyzed. For a detailed description of the catalytic activities, the rate constants kapp and kp were determined using in-situ Raman spectroscopy at a temperature of 150 °C. The polymers produced have molar masses of up to 71 000 g mol−1 and are therefore suitable for a variety of applications. Toxicity measurements carried out for these complexes proved the nontoxicity of the systems. © 2019 The Authors. Published by Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

2021, Meurer, Josefine, Hniopek, Julian, Dahlke, Jan, Schmitt, Michael, Popp, Jürgen, Zechel, Stefan, Hager, Martin D.

This article presents novel biobased ionomers featuring self-healing abilities. These smart materials are synthesized from itaconic acid derivates. Large quantities of itaconic acid can be produced from diverse biomass like corn, rice, and others. This study presents a comprehensive investigation of their thermal and mechanical properties via differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA), and FT-Raman and FT-IR measurements as well as dynamic mechanic analysis. Within all these measurements, different kinds of structure-property relationships could be derived from these measurements. For example, the proportion of ionic groups enormously influences the self-healing efficiency. The investigation of the self-healing abilities reveals healing efficiencies up to 99% in 2 h at 90 °C for the itaconic acid based ionomer with the lowest ionic content. © 2020 The Authors. Macromolecular Rapid Communications published by Wiley-VCH GmbH