Curing of epoxy with aromatic amine bearing boronic ester bonds enables reprocessing and configurable shape recovery

Abstract

In this contribution, we report a facile synthesis of aromatic amine hardener bearing boronic ester bonds for epoxy By using diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A (DGEBA) as the starting compound, the hardener was synthesized via the combination of carboxyl-epoxide and 1,3-diol-boronic acid reactions. The as-obtained product was successfully used to cure a series of epoxies. It was found that the cured epoxy networks possessed the thermal and mechanical properties comparable to the counterparts of traditional epoxy thermosets. Owing to the introduction of boronic ester bonds, nonetheless, the epoxy networks had excellent reprocessing (or recycling) properties. Moreover, the epoxy networks displayed shape memory properties and the original shapes of the shape memory epoxy networks can be reprogramed owing to the exchange of dynamic boronic ester bonds.