Castor Oil-Derived Polyoxalates

Abstract

The majority of polymeric materials manufactured today come from non-renewable and pollution causing petroleum-based raw materials. Additionally, most of these are non-degradable, and the plastic waste generated globally causes a lot of environmental and, thus, economic problems. Castor oil is a bio-renewable resource used to make various commodities such as lubricants, surfactants, coatings and polymers. In this work, two novel castor oil-based oxalate dimethyl esters have been synthesized, one of which (monomer (5)) was used to synthesize novel, degradable polyoxalates with bio-renewable diol comonomers. The obtained polymers were amorphous and viscous liquids at room temperature, which showed good degradation in acidic media, as is expected for polyoxalate materials. Under optimized conditions, Mw of up to 20,000 g/mol with dispersities between 2.5 and 2.9 were obtained. The obtained polymers were further cross-linked using thiol-ene click chemistry to yield potentially degradable cross-linked polymers.