Sustainable High Performance Polymers from Functional Building-Blocks Created in Water

The projects aim to develop new materials based on renewable resources. The synthetic strategy involved is highly modular. This modularity enables a plethora of monomeric building blocks in one step. The final materials originate from abundant, cheap, and renewable reactants, meaning that the developed material would apply to all applications, ranging from advanced biomedical applications to consumer polymers. By design, the building blocks contain both carbamates and ester—the carbamate forms powerful hydrogen bonding interactions with each other. The strong interactions result in both advantageous mechanical properties, whereas the ester imparts degradability. The increased hydrogen bonding between the polymer chains also facilitates interactions with native fibers, such as wood cellulose fibers, making these materials attractive as a matrix for biocomposites.