Abstract
Two biobased epoxy resin monomers derived from myrcene and plant oil are synthesized without using petroleum-based bisphenol A. To obtain material with balanced strength and toughness, the two epoxy monomers are cured together in different weight proportions. Properties of cured epoxy resin are tested by different techniques. Tensile and impact tests indicate that when the content of myrcene-based epoxy is 50–75 wt %, the cured sample has a high strain of 32.30–161.47%, and a moderate tensile strength of 9.57–15.96 MPa. Dynamic mechanical analysis suggests that the glass transition temperature (Tg) of cured samples increases from 17 to 71 °C with the increasing content of myrcene-based epoxy. Morphology of fracture surface indicates that the cured sample containing plant oil-based epoxy resin shows obvious plastic deformation. The curing kinetics of the two epoxies resin is studied by differential scanning calorimetry. Also, the calculated activation energy is 70.49 kJ/mol for myrcene-based epoxy and 64.02 kJ/mol for poly-fatty acid-derived epoxy resin. The thermogravimetric analysis indicates that the main degradation temperature of all cured samples is above 300 °C. The sustainable biobased epoxy has some potential in preparing flexible epoxy materials and can be used to toughen conventional petroleum-based epoxy.
Highlights
Epoxy resin is one important thermosetting polymer that combines excellent mechanical properties, chemical resistance, and thermal properties
The specimens were carefully removed from the mold and used for tensile, impact, dynamic mechanical property, fracture morphology, and the thermal property tests
Two novel biobased epoxy resin monomer derived from myrcene and epoxy fatty acid methyl ester were successfully synthesized
Summary
Epoxy resin is one important thermosetting polymer that combines excellent mechanical properties, chemical resistance, and thermal properties It is used in various applications, including surface coatings, adhesives, printed circuit board coatings, and polymer composites.[1,2] The most common and important type of epoxy resin (about 90%) is synthesized from bisphenol A (BPA) and epichlorohydrin. Isosorbide epoxy synthesized and cured with terpene maleic anhydride (TMA) and maleopimaric acid (MPA) has a comparable or even better mechanical property and thermal stability than BPA-type epoxies.[19] A gallic acid-derived epoxy outperforms the commercial diglycidyl ether of BPA (DGEBA) in terms of cross-link density and char yield.[20] As mentioned above, there is a growing trend toward developing renewable resource-based epoxies, which can partially substitute petroleum-based epoxy from the view of cost performance and environmental protection. Epoxy fatty acid methyl ester (EFAME, Figure 1) is derived from plant oil via the esterification and epoxidation reaction It contains long aliphatic chain in its structure. The tensile properties, impact properties, dynamic mechanical properties, morphologies of fracture surfaces, thermostability, and gel content of cured samples were all investigated
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