Renewable co-polymers derived from vanillin and fatty acid derivatives

Renewable monomers derived from vanillin and fatty acids have been studied as monomers in ADMET, thiol-ene addition, and polycondensation type polymerization reactions. Both synthesized monomers and polymers were adequately characterized by NMR, DSC, and GPC. The synthesis of polymers via ADMET was optimized with regard to the applied catalyst and catalyst loading. Remarkably, it turned out that ADMET polymerizations led to high molecular weights (up to 50 kDa), whereas thiol-ene polyaddition and polycondensation led to polymers with molecular weight up to 15 and 17 kDa, respectively. Thermoplastic materials with melting points in the range from 15.8 to 77.8 °C and Tgs in the range from −37.0 to −13.6 °C were thus obtained.