Bio‐based epoxy vitrimers: Reprocessibility, controllable shape memory, and degradability

ABSTRACT The research activities in the development of recyclable and reprocessable covalently crosslinked networks, and the construction of polymers from renewable resources are both stemmed from the economical and environmental problems associated with traditional thermosets. However, there is little effort in combination of these two attractive strategies in material designs. This article reported a bio‐based vitrimer constructed from isosorbide‐derived epoxy and aromatic diamines containing disulfide bonds. The resulted dynamic epoxy resins showed comparable thermomechanical properties as compared to similar epoxy networks cured by traditional curing agent. Rheological tests demonstrated the fast stress relaxation of the dynamic network due to the rapid metathesis of disulfide bonds at temperature higher than glass transition temperature. This feature permitted the recycling and reprocessing of the fragmented samples for several times by hot press. The dynamic epoxy resins also exhibited shape‐memory effect, and it is demonstrated that the shape recovery ratio could be readily adjusted by controlling the stress relaxation in the temporary state at programming temperature. Moreover, the degradability of the dynamic epoxy resins in alkaline aqueous solution was also demonstrated. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2017 , 55 , 1790–1799