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A Cross-linked Polyethylene with Recyclability and Mechanical Robustness Enabled by Establishment of Multiple Hydrogen Bonds Network via Reactive Melt Blending

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Abstract

Physical cross-linking by hydrogen-bonds (H-bonds), providing a good combination of application properties of thermosets and processability of thermoplastics, is a potential strategy to resolve the recycling problem of traditional chemically cross-linked polyethylene. However, ureidopyrimidone (UPy), the most widely used H-bonding motif, is unfavorable for large-scale industrial application due to its poor thermal stability. In this work, H-bonds cross-linked polyethylene was successfully prepared by reactive melt blending maleic anhydride grafted polyethylene (PE-g-MAH) with 3-amino-1,2,4-triazole (ATA) to form amide triazole ring-carboxylic acid units. Triazole ring can easily generate multiple H-bonds with carboxylic acid and amide. More importantly, these units are more thermal stable than UPy due to the absence of unstable urea group of UPy. The introduction of H-bonds cross-linking leads to an obvious improvement in mechanical properties and creep resistance and a good maintain in thermal properties and recyclability. Furthermore, the reinforcement effect monotonically improves with increasing the density of H-bonds. The obtained good properties are mainly attributed to largely enhanced interchain interactions induced by H-bonds cross-linking and intrinsic reversibility of H-bonds. This work develops a novel way for the simple fabrication of H-bonds cross-linked PE with high performance through reactive melt blending.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51803130) and Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities and Chongqing University Key Laboratory of Micro/Nano Materials Engineering and Technology (No. KFJJ2005).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Polymer Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610065, China

    Hong-Da Mao, Ting-Ting Zhang, Zhen-You Guo, Hao Xiu & Qiang Fu

  2. Chongqing University Key Laboratory of Micro/Nano Materials Engineering and Technology, Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences, Chongqing, 402160, China

    Dong-Yu Bai

  3. Hubei Huifu Nanomaterial Co., LTD., Yichang, 443007, China

    Jie Wang

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  1. Hong-Da Mao
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  2. Ting-Ting Zhang
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Correspondence to Jie Wang.

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Mao, HD., Zhang, TT., Guo, ZY. et al. A Cross-linked Polyethylene with Recyclability and Mechanical Robustness Enabled by Establishment of Multiple Hydrogen Bonds Network via Reactive Melt Blending. Chin J Polym Sci 41, 1104–1114 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10118-023-2907-5

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