Transformation of Polyethylene Into a Vitrimer by Nitroxide Radical Coupling of a Bis-Dioxaborolane Florent Caffy, Renaud Nicolaÿ
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Transformation of polyethylene into a vitrimer by nitroxide radical coupling of a bis-dioxaborolane Florent Caffy, Renaud Nicolaÿ To cite this version: Florent Caffy, Renaud Nicolaÿ. Transformation of polyethylene into a vitrimer by nitroxide radical coupling of a bis-dioxaborolane. Polymer Chemistry, Royal Society of Chemistry - RSC, 2019, 10 (23), pp.3107-3115. 10.1039/C9PY00253G. hal-02406402 HAL Id: hal-02406402 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02406402 Submitted on 25 Jun 2021 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Please do not adjust margins ARTICLE Transformation of polyethylene into a vitrimer by nitroxide radical coupling of a bis-dioxaborolane Received 00th January 20xx, Florent Caffy and Renaud Nicolaÿ* Accepted 00th January 20xx Vitrimers are a new class of polymeric materials that combine the re-processability of thermoplastics with the superior DOI: 10.1039/x0xx00000x chemical and thermo-mechanical properties of thermosets. Transforming existing thermoplastics, and especially commodity plastics, into vitrimers during their processing is an exciting challenge that could greatly facilitate the industrial development of these materials. In this study, we combined nitroxide chemistry, for radical grafting, and boronic ester metathesis, as an associative exchange reaction, to prepare PE vitrimers via a single-step reactive extrusion of commercial HDPE. After studying the grafting efficiency of a model nitroxide carrying a dioxaborolane moiety, a bis-dioxaborolane bearing two nitroxide functions was used to synthesize vitrimers. The functionalization degree and its impact on the degree of crystallinity of vitrimers were quantified. The flow properties, thermal stability and thermo-mechanical properties of the resulting vitrimers were also studied. We found that associative exchange reactions allow full stress relaxation and provide processability to the vitrimers up to approximately 200 °C. Above this temperature, the thermolabile alkoxyamine bonds within the cross-links irreversibly dissociate, resulting in a material with a zero-shear viscosity comparable to that of the starting HDPE. The recyclability of these vitrimers was successfully exemplified with successive cycles of processing and mechanical testing, while their creep resistance at 80 °C was compared to that of their HDPE precursor. materials, coined Vitrimers by Leibler et col.,7,8 present a unique Introduction set of properties that make them a class of materials on their own. Thermosets present superior thermo-mechanical properties The pivotal element of vitrimers is their dynamic crosslinks. and chemical resistance as compared to thermoplastics. Today, a large number of associative exchange reactions have However, chemically cross-linked polymers cannot be been successfully implemented to design vitrimers and processed multiple times and are therefore not recyclable, vitrimer-like materials, including transesterification of esters unlike thermoplastics.1,2 When comparing thermoplastics and and boronic esters,7,9 addition-fragmentation chain thermosets of identical chemical nature, their differences in transfer,10,11 transamination of imines and vinylogous properties result solely from the modification of their topology. urethanes,12,13 olefin and dioxaborolane metathesis,14,15 Thermoplastics are constituted of polymer chains of finite sizes, transcarbonation,16 transalkylation and transalkoxylation,17-19 while thermosets are made of a permanent polymer network of addition- elimination of thiols with Meldrum’s acid.20 However, infinite dimension. In order to combine the processability of while the vast majority of the 335 million tons of plastics thermoplastics with the superior properties of thermosets, produced in the world in 2016 were made from olefins or vinyl significant efforts have been made in recent years to design monomers polymerized via a chain growth process, vitrimers chemical networks incorporating reversible and/or dynamic have been so far mostly prepared by step growth process of cross-links.2-6 While polymer networks based on reversible functional monomers. When preparing vitrimers from olefin or cross-links undergo partial dissociation at high temperature (or vinyl monomers, three main synthetic approaches can be under light irradiation), thereby passing below the gel point to followed: (a) the direct copolymerization of such monomers yield polymer chains of finite sizes, networks relying on with a multifunctional cross-linker containing exchangeable associative exchange reactions maintain a constant connectivity group(s);11 (b) the crosslinking of thermoplastic copolymers regardless of the temperature. The ability of the latter to be carrying pendant exchangeable functions with processed multiple times is made possible by the reshuffling of (macro)molecules containing several complementary dynamic bonds within the network, which exchange the exchangeable groups;9,15 or (c) the direct transformation of fragments they are connecting while maintaining constant the non-functional “conventional” plastics into vitrimers by reactive number of chemical bonds in the system. As a result, these processing.15 The latter approach is particularly appealing to design industrially relevant vitrimers, as it allows transforming Chimie Moléculaire, Macromoléculaire, Matériaux. ESPCI Paris, CNRS, PSL commercial plastics into vitrimers with the need to change University, 75005 Paris, France neither their already optimized syntheses nor their current Electronic Supplementary Information (ESI) available: [details of any supplementary information available should be included here]. See DOI: 10.1039/x0xx00000x processing. Such a synthetic approach requires to develop Please do not adjust margins Please do not adjust margins ARTICLE Journal Name efficient grafting chemistries and to make use of dynamic bonds Tensile tests. Uniaxial tensile tests were performed on an that are thermally and chemically compatible with reactive Instron 5564 apparatus with dumbbell-shaped geometries processing. Moreover, the exchangeable links should be (gauge length 10 mm) at a fixed crosshead speed of 10 mm/min. sufficiently dynamic to yield vitrimers with viscosities Tensile creep tests were performed on the same machine at compatible with extrusion for example. We recently showed 80 °C and with same sample geometries. After 5 min of that the metathesis of dioxaborolanes meets all these criteria equilibration at 80 °C a constant crosshead speed of 10 mm/min and we were able to transform high-density polyethylene was applied until the engineering stress reached 5 MPa. Then, (HDPE) into a vitrimer via a two-step reactive extrusion process. this stress was maintained for 60000 s (Fig S.20). The creep Radical grafting of maleimides bearing dioxaborolane functions values reported in Fig. 7 correspond to the increase in creep was achieved in a first step, which was followed by the deformation between 10 000 s and 60 000 s. These values were crosslinking of the functional PE with a complementary bis- averaged over 4 tests on different specimens for dioxaborolane.15 reproducibility. In this study, we aimed at simplifying even further the Rheological characterizations. Rheological measurements transformation of HDPE into a vitrimer, by performing a single- were performed on an Anton Paar MCR501 rheometer step reactive extrusion. Additionally, we chose to test nitroxides equipped with a convection oven under nitrogen flow using a as grafting agents in order to expand the chemical toolbox parallel plate geometry (diameter 25 mm). Stress relaxation available to prepare vitrimers by reactive processing. To this measurements were carried out from 150 °C to 250 °C by aim, we synthesized a monofunctional dioxaborolane nitroxide, applying a constant shear strain of 1%. Zero shear viscosities which was used to study the grafting process, as well as a bis- were calculated from stress relaxation experiments according η = ∞ G(t)dt nitroxide dioxaborolane, which was used to transform HDPE to the formula ∫0 . Strain sweep measurements into a vitrimer by reactive extrusion. Vitrimers with different were performed with a strain amplitude ranging from 0.1 to 2 cross-linking densities were successfully prepared and fully %, with a constant angular frequency of 1 rad/s. characterized, paying special attention to their flow properties Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. FTIR as a function of temperature, thermal stability, mechanical spectroscopy was conducted on a Tensor 37 spectrometer from properties and recyclability. Bruker in solid state and recorded in attenuated total reflectance (ATR) mode. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. 1H and 13C Experimental NMR spectra were recorded at 297 K on a Bruker AVANCE 400 Materials spectrometer at 400 MHz and 100 MHz, respectively, and 1 referenced to the residual solvent peaks ( H, δ 7.26 for CDCl3; All chemical products and solvents were used as received and 13 C, δ 77.16 for CDCl3). In the case of TEMPO derivatives, NMR without