An eco-friendly sustainable plasticizer from isosorbide and nonanoic acid: synthesis and application

In this contribution, isosorbide dinonanoate (SDN), an environmentally sustainable plasticizer for polypropylene (PP), is successfully synthesized by virtue of esterification reaction using isosorbide and nonanoic acid with the reaction temperature of 120 °C, and the reaction time of 5 h. When the corporation of plasticizer SDN into PP matrix is the value of 15 phr, the impact strength of PP blends reaches 121 J/m, the dramatically increase of 384% compare to that of PP. DMA results shows that the glass transition temperature (T g ) of PP blends gradually decline with the increasing amount of SDN, indicating the efficient plasticization action of the SDN. It is suggested that SDN can be feasibly inserted into the non-polar matrix and then more evenly dispersed in matrix, herein, it will increase the distance between the polymer chains, improving the mobility of the molecular chains and the processing performance of the polymers. Furthermore, the plasticizing effect and environmental friendliness of SDN can be a potential replacement for o-phenyl plasticizers in the industry in the future.