Tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) thermochemolysis of the aliphatic biopolymer cutan: insights into the chemical structure

Tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) thermochemolysis has been applied to the diagenetically resistant aliphatic biopolymer cutan derived from the leaf cuticles of Agave americana. Data obtained from the cutan sample using this new analytical method are vastly different in comparison with conventional flash pyrolysis data of the same sample. Under conventional flash pyrolysis conditions, the dominant products were alkanes, alkenes, and α, ω-alkadienes. Under thermochemolysis conditions, however, the cutan biopolymer yielded fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs) of varying carbon chain length, along with a large number of benzenecarboxylic acid methyl esters that point to the possibility of a chemical structure containing functionalized benzene rings. This type of structure is absent from the current structural model of cutan.