A recyclable vanillin-based epoxy resin with high-performance that can compete with DGEBA

In this paper, a high-performance epoxy resin was synthesized from vanillin , and the polyimine-epoxy cross-linked network was prepared via in-situ formation of the Schiff base structure. The chemical structures, thermal and mechanical properties of vanillin-based epoxy resin (DADE) and diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A epoxy resin (DGEBA) were characterized by fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), nuclear magnetic resonance spectra ( 1 H NMR), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and dynamic thermomechanical analysis (DMA). The results indicated that the DADE showed better thermal and mechanical properties than DGEBA after cured by the same primary amine (D230). The prepared DADE-D230 showed higher Tg (106℃), tensile strength (57.4 MPa) and elongation at break (3.1%) than DGEBA-D230 (98℃, 45.1 MPa, and 2.4%, respectively). Moreover, it can be recycled at a hot pressing, and the reprocessed samples showed a comparable performance with DGEBA.