Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Carbon dioxide-based copolymers such as polypropylene carbonate (PPC) can offer the double environmental benefit of capturing CO2 and replacing oil-based raw materials in the plastics industry with renewable ones. However, their production at an industrial level is still limited by the range of applications in which their physicochemical properties are competitive and ideally surpass those of fossil-based polymeric commodities. This work introduces PPC materials with high-stretch and self-healing properties that were prepared by copolymerization of CO2 and propylene oxide using tailored Zn glutarate catalysts. The PPC materials were analyzed in terms of composition, molecular weight, thermal and mechanical behavior, particularly focusing on their tensile properties, strain recovery, creep response, and self-healing ability. All the prepared PPC materials showed good ductility and self-healing properties. The most promising ones achieved excellent and fast recovery of extremely high elongations (>700%), still reaching remarkable values (>600%) after proper self-healing. These high-stretch and self-healing PPC materials are completely amorphous, present good optical transparency, and can be processed using techniques normally used for other thermoplastics. Therefore, they are promising for a variety of applications, including shrink films and self-healing packaging, thus providing new, valuable perspectives for the industrialization of these CO2-based polymers.
DOI: 10.3390/ijms26083878
Institutions: University of Brescia, University of Groningen
Language: English
Subfield: Polymers and Plastics
Field: Materials Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,499
OpenAlex ID: W4409606956