Abstract
Green nanocomposites based on renewable plant oils and polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes (POSS) have been developed. An acid-catalyzed curing of epoxidized plant oils with oxirane-containing POSS derivatives produced transparent nanocomposite coatings with high gloss surface, in which the organic and inorganic components were linked via covalent bonds. The hardness and mechanical strength were improved by the incorporation of the POSS unit into the organic polymer matrix. Nanostructural analyses of the nanocomposites showed the formation of homogeneous structures at the micrometer scale. On the other hand, such improvements of the coating and mechanical properties were not observed in the composite without covalent bonds between the plant oil-based polymer and POSS unit. The study demonstrates the correlation between the nanostructure of composites and macroscopic properties.
Highlights
There has been an enormous interest in organic-inorganic nanocomposites as generation materials because of their high potentials to realize novel properties and to tailor these properties
A mixture of the epoxidized plant oil, polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes (POSS), and thermally-latent cationic catalyst was coated on a glass slide, followed by the curing at 140 °C for 2 h to produce green nanocomposites with high transparency
Green nanocomposites based on renewable plant oils and POSS have been developed
Summary
There has been an enormous interest in organic-inorganic nanocomposites as generation materials because of their high potentials to realize novel properties and to tailor these properties. Zheng et al investigated the morphology and thermal properties of POSS containing epoxy hybrid [30] In these cases, the nano-sized cage structures are incorporated into common plastics by copolymerization or grafting to improve their various properties such as thermal stability, oxidation resistance, oxygen permeability, low permittivity, and low refractive index. Various cationic polymerization of epoxidized plant oils can be achieved by photoinitiators, latent catalysts, or acid catalysts These epoxy compounds from renewable resources possess high potential as a starting material for bio-based thermosetting plastics [35,36,37,38]. The introduction of the oxirane-containing POSS is anticipated an uniform distribution in the polymer matrix by the copolymerization of epoxidized plant oils and POSS derivatives, and an improvement of coating and mechanical properties of plant oil-based network polymer. Three POSS derivatives were used for preparation of green nanocomposites (Figure 1)
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