Circular Thermoset Materials: How to exploit Precision Engineered Macromolecules in their Bottom-up Design?

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While displaying superior properties compared to thermoplastic polymers, thermosets – which have an annual global production of 40 million tons and are for example used in windmill blades and adhesives – represent a major worldwide challenge. Their crosslinked structure presents many hurdles when it comes to recycling and responding to Europe’s desire for a circular economy. The overarching objective of the CiMaC-program is to propose ground-breaking solutions to the major shortcomings of Covalent Adaptable Networks (CANs), being their long-term dimensional stability and (re)processing ability when using industrial techniques, thereby enabling the urgent uptake of these revolutionary thermosets from academic research to an industrial level. Covalent dynamic chemistry should ideally enable a combination of the bulk processing possible when using thermoplastics and the high durability of thermosets. Today, however, the chemical design of CANs, with ultrafast (re)processing potential, along with dimensional stability under service conditions, represents the holy grail in sustainable material science. The unique concept to tackle this ultimate goal will start from my recognized expertise in precision macromolecular chemistry. The central idea is that the use of precisely engineered telechelic macromolecules as CAN-precursors will allow an unprecedented regulation of the resulting CAN properties through control over different molecular parameters, such as tacticity and internal catalysis. First, several innovative synthetic protocols/methodologies will be developed to make such unique telechelic structures on a large enough scale for material science. After their incorporation into CANs, the key findings within the CiMaC knowledge platform on reprocessing and long-term performance of crosslinked materials, will be implemented for both the development of robust, on-demand debondable adhesives, as well as for providing the first upscalable extrudable thermoset materials.