| Summary: | To fulfill the demand for household, industrial, light weight transportation, health, and cosmetic products etc., production of polymeric materials has been increasing every year. However, limited resource of fossil fuel is threatening the sustainability of the raw materials used to produce these products. These products have very low to no biodegradability, thereby staying in the ecosystem for long time causing serious threats. Increasing environmental concerns and strict regulations has made renewable based materials suitable for the development of environmental friendly polymers with sustainability. Novel plant oil based vinyl ether (POVE) monomers were derived from plant oil such as soybean, linseed and camelina oil. Polymers varying in molecular weight (MW) were derived from these monomers and studied for air-drying coatings. Study of the coating and free film properties showed that at a given MW, Tensile (Young’s modulus, and tensile strength), viscoelastic (Tg, XLD), physical (hardness, solvent resistance, and impact resistance) properties increased with increasing unsaturation in the parent PO. Polymers derived from distilled POVE monomers resulted essentially colorless poly(POVEs) which were evaluated as a binder for artist paint in comparison to linseed oil. Colorless poly(POVE)s showed significantly faster dry/cure along with dramatically lower yellowness than linseed oil. Novel, vinyl ether monomers, were also synthesized from cardanol (CEVE) and eugenol (EEVE) and coatings produced from their homopolymers and copolymers with cyclohexyl vinyl ether were studied in comparison to commercial alkyds. Glass transition temperatures of these homopolymers were increased with CHVE incorporation. However, incorporation of 25% CHVE resulted in cured coatings and free films with better mechanical, viscoelastic and physical properties than commercial alkyds. Incorporation of CHVE > 50wt.% in the copolymer resulted in low crosslinked networks with reduced properties such as percent elongation, chemical resistance and impact resistance. Epoxidized poly(EEVE) resins varying in percent epoxide (30%, 50% and 70%) were synthesized and studied for two component amine cured coatings in comparison to BPA based epoxy resin. Results obtained from high throughput experimentation showed the ability of Epoly(EEVE) resins with 50% or higher epoxide to form harder, higher crosslinked coatings with tunability based on type of curative than BPA based resin. === National Science Foundation EPSCoR Program (grant IIA-1355466)
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