Renewable Biobased Polymeric Materials: Facile Synthesis of Itaconic Anhydride-Based Copolymers with Poly(l-lactic acid) Grafts

Abstract

This paper reports a new synthesis of biobased polymers by using itaconic anhydride (IAn) and lactic acid (LA) as renewable starting materials. Poly(lactic acid) (PLA)-graft copolymers were synthesized via two approaches. First, the macromonomer approach utilized IAn for Sn-catalyzed synthesis of PLA-containing macromonomers (IAn-PLA Macro). The macromonomer was radically copolymerized with n-butyl methacrylate (BMA), n-butyl acrylate (BA), methyl methacrylate (MMA), and ethyl methacrylate (EMA) to give efficiently graft copolymers (PLA-Graft copolymer (I)) with molecular weight Mn up to 1.61 × 105 having biomass content higher than 34 wt %. Second, the copolymer approach employed first IAn as comonomer for radical copolymerization with BMA, giving rise to IAn-BMA copolymer with Mn higher than 5.76 × 104. Then, Sn-catalyzed grafting of PLA onto IAn moiety of the copolymer produced PLA-Graft copolymer (II) with Mn higher than 5.88 × 104, showing biomass content ≥29 wt %. In addition, radical homopolymeriza...