| Interest in using renewable raw materials to prepare biobased monomers, polymers, and materials is rapidly increasing. The goal of the research described is to develop branched polyesters of plant oil fatty acids, using different core polyols (i.e. sucrose, dipentaerythritol, and tripentaerythritol) and plant oils (i.e. linseed, safflower, and soybean), into curing systems that have potential uses in applications such as coatings, composites, and adhesives. This study is mainly focused on the use of sucrose as the core polyol in the soyate resins.;Sucrose esters and their derivatives have a compact structure, high density, and high functionality---double bonds, epoxides, or hydroxyls. When considering the use of sucrose ester compounds to form crosslinked materials, the rigid core of sucrose can potentially impart hardness to the thermoset, and the high functionality can lead to rapid gelation and high crosslink density. Thus, these novel biobased resins using sucrose esters of plant oils have the potential to be a significant advance in biobased resin technology, as well as to be competitive with the conventional petroleum-based resins. |
