Polymer International最新文献

This study investigates the development and characterization of solid polymer electrolytes based on hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC) for magnesium ion transport. Electrolyte films were prepared using a conventional solution casting technique, incorporating HPMC and magnesium acetate. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and XRD analyses were conducted to examine the interactions between the polymer and salt components. Impedance spectroscopy was employed to assess the electrical conductivity of the prepared electrolytes. Thermal stability was evaluated using TGA. The FTIR and XRD results indicated the formation of a complex between the polymer and salt. The electrolyte containing 30 wt% magnesium acetate exhibited a room temperature ionic conductivity of 5.88 × 10⁻⁴ S cm⁻¹, demonstrating enhanced electrical properties. An electrical double-layer capacitor was fabricated using this high-conductivity electrolyte, and its electrochemical performance was analysed. © 2025 The Author(s). Polymer International published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.

Pursuing sustainable and lightweight materials has increased interest in extrusion-based 3D printing of biocomposites for various applications. This study focused on designing and studying a novel advanced 3D-printed lightweight bamboo and chapati food waste powder-based composite material. Bamboo fiber powder and chapati food waste powder derived from natural sources and sodium alginate, a biodegradable polymer from brown algae, were used to develop eco-friendly composites. The developed 3D-printed samples were evaluated for morphological structure by scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, differential scanning calorimetry, Raman spectroscopy and mechanical analysis. Scanning electron microscopy confirmed the uniform distribution of bamboo fiber powder and chapati food waste powder within the sodium alginate matrix. The X-ray diffraction peaks confirmed the semicrystalline structures with characteristic peaks for sodium alginate, bamboo fiber powder and chapati food waste powder. The Raman results confirmed the bamboo fiber powder and chapati food waste powder content in the 3D-printed composites. The incorporation of bamboo fiber powder with different concentrations enhanced the mechanical properties with an increase in tensile strength. This work highlights the development of advanced 3D-printed lightweight bamboo and starch powder-based composite materials, offering a promising pathway toward sustainable materials. © 2025 Society of Chemical Industry.

Aqueous mixtures of the poly(diallyldimethylammonium cation) (pDADMA⁺) and the fluorescent anionic dye Alexa Fluor® 546 (A546) are characterized using multiple fluorescence spectroscopy techniques. A546 and pDADMA⁺ demonstrate binding interactions leading to the formation of noncovalent A546–pDADMA⁺ complexes based on the quenching and recovery of A546 fluorescence emission intensity as a function of pDADMA⁺ concentration. Fluorescence anisotropies of the mixtures support the results of fluorescence emission intensity analysis and yield a sub-micromolar equilibrium dissociation constant for the complexes indicating that strong attractive electrostatic interactions produce complexation. Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) characterization of the complexes in solutions containing systematically varied concentrations of either chloride or carboxylate anions suggests chain dimension collapse of pDADMA⁺ in the complexes and preferential binding of A546 anions to lower-molecular-weight complexes in solution. Comparison of these effects as a function of solution ionic strength produced by chloride, monocarboxylate and dicarboxylate anion addition indicates that carboxylate anions have significantly stronger binding interactions with pDADMA⁺ than chloride ions. Differences in the binding of aliphatic carboxylate anions of different chain length with pDADMA⁺ are attributed to differences in their hydrophobic interactions with the organic polymer chains of pDADMA⁺. Further FCS studies of noncovalent A546–pDADMA⁺ complexes prepared from narrow-molecular-weight fractions of pDADMA⁺ hold the promise of deeper insights into the binding behaviors and hydrodynamic size variability of this industrially important polyelectrolyte. © 2025 Society of Chemical Industry.

In this study, an epoxy resin (diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A) was modified with triblock copolymers: poly(ethylene glycol)–poly(propylene glycol)–poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG-PPG-PEG) or PPG-PEG-PPG, with 10 wt% PEG in their structure, referred to as EPE and PEP, respectively. The aim was to evaluate the influence of the PEG and PPG block sequence on the phase morphology and enhance the fracture toughness of the thermoset matrix. Scanning electron microscopy revealed immiscibility for PEP systems and partially miscible to immiscible behavior for EPE systems, depending on the mass fraction used. The EPE fraction reduced the size of the dispersed phase, while the PPG end-group block sequence in PEP suppressed coalescence, stabilizing the dispersion and decreasing dispersed phase size. Differential scanning calorimetry showed a reduction of ca 20 °C in the glass transition temperature for the EPE systems, while for the PEP systems there were no significant changes, corroborating the immiscible system found in microscopy. Analysis of the mechanical properties revealed that incorporating the copolymer enhanced fracture energy absorption, as demonstrated by the increased toughness (up to 41%) compared to the neat epoxy. Systems with smaller spherical/ellipsoidal domains exhibited greater toughness, indicating that particle distribution and size significantly influence the material's toughness. Regarding tensile results, a reduction in tensile strength values was observed for all modified systems, especially for the EPE-10 system. These findings underscore the significance of the block sequence in triblock copolymers, emphasizing the importance of tailoring specific morphologies to enhance mechanical properties. © 2025 The Author(s). Polymer International published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.

This work pioneers the synthesis of a new class of benzoxazine monomers incorporating hydroxylated chalcone units (HAN-HB) using 2′-hydroxy-1′-acetonaphthone (HAN) and p-hydroxybenzaldehyde (HB) by following the Claisen–Schmidt condensation process. Three types of structurally varied bifunctional benzoxazines (Bz) were prepared using HAN-HB and paraformaldehyde separately with tyramine (ty), 3-amino-1-propanol (ap) and 2-(2-aminoethoxy)ethanol (aee) by adopting Mannich condensation. Both the HAN-HB and benzoxazine molecular structures were confirmed by different spectroscopic analyses. DSC analysis reveal that HAN-HB-ap benzoxazine showed the lowest T_p value of 214 °C. Poly(HAN-HB-ty) possesses the highest values of thermal decomposition temperature and percentage char yield. Further, all the polybenzoxazines exhibit self-extinguishing and good heat-resistant properties. In addition, the synthesised benzoxazines showed good anti-microbial behavior. Photosensitive properties of the benzoxazines were studied using UV–visible spectroscopic analysis and the results indicated that the synthesised benzoxazines exhibited both photo-isomerisation and photocrosslinking due to their inherent molecular rearrangement ability. An aggregation-caused quenching characteristic was observed for the benzoxazines through a fluorescence study. From the water contact angle study, it was inferred that all the poly(HAN-HB-Bz) exhibited a water repellent nature and showed a higher water contact angle of 151°. The corrosion-resistant behaviour of polybenzoxazines towards a mild steel surface was studied and the results obtained infer that these materials exhibit good protection efficiency. Density functional theory studies were performed for all the chalcone-based benzoxazines. The incorporation of hydroxyl groups not only improves hydrogen bonding interactions, enhancing thermal stability, but also introduces photo-reactivity. This dual functionality is not commonly reported in conventional benzoxazines. The results obtained from various studies suggest that the developed chalcone-based benzoxazines can be suitably exploited for advanced photosensitive coating applications. © 2025 Society of Chemical Industry.

Assembling various organic building blocks through carbon–carbon double-bond linkages is highly efficient for constructing high-performance organic semiconductors. Microporous/nanoporous structures can provide robust mass collection accommodation and reactive reaction sites. Here, we report the synthesis of a series of vinylene-linked conjugated porous polymers by Knoevenagel condensation of a tetratopic monomer tetramethyl-2,2′-bipyridine with different ditopic monomers. The presence of the 2,2′-bipyridine building blocks created π-extended conjugation polymeric frameworks, substantial n-type semiconducting properties and coplanar conformation. These frameworks also exhibit strong electron-deficient characters and finely tuned energy levels. Upon visible light irradiation, they exhibited the highest activity of hydrogen peroxide generation up to 1413 μmol h⁻¹ g⁻¹ in pure water. Their excellent recycling and reusability suggest their potential applications in green chemical transformation. © 2025 Society of Chemical Industry.

Cellulose-based materials have been explored in several fields due to their abundance, performance, low cost and environmental benefits. The development of fiber-based products is highly attractive in countries with large agricultural areas and high production of agro-industrial waste. In Brazil, the waste from the palm oil industry stands out as a promising cellulosic source for biomaterials but remains underexplored. In the present study, various biomaterials such as palm bunch fiber, cellulose and cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs) were extracted from palm oil waste and characterized in terms of morphology, size distribution, crystalline structure, chemical composition and thermostability. Palm bunch fiber exhibited α-cellulose as the main component (41%), followed by hemicellulose (21%) and lignin (12%). Potassium (K) was the most abundant inorganic element found in nanofibrils. High-aspect-ratio CNFs were isolated using disc ultra-refining, with an average width of 21 nm and higher crystallinity compared to palm fiber and cellulose. Thermostability assays revealed that CNFs exhibited the highest residual weight at elevated temperatures (>500 °C), whereas palm bunch fiber and cellulose showed superior onset and maximum degradation temperatures. Overall, the distinct characteristics of these cellulose-based materials produced from palm oil waste highlight the potential of this agro-industrial waste as a valuable lignocellulosic source to develop sustainable materials for a wide range of applications. © 2025 Society of Chemical Industry.

Establishing a reliable workflow of inverse design by data-driven machine learning (ML) models offers significant potential to accelerate molecular design of polymeric materials. Nevertheless, there exist scarcity issues of training datasets in current data-driven models for polymers. In this contribution, we integrate the ML method with a data augmentation strategy to build upon a workflow of inverse design of polymeric materials with targeted glass transition temperature T_g. Results show that the data-augmented ML model significantly enhances the prediction accuracy of T_g in spite of a small training dataset. Furthermore, the data augmentation strategy has the capability of generating the monomers of homopolymers with higher novelty and uniqueness, whose T_g values are validated by the simulations of all-atomic molecular dynamics. The ML-assisted inverse design workflow offers significant advantages in establishing structure–property relationships and also provides an accelerated pathway for the targeted design of polymer systems. © 2025 Society of Chemical Industry.

This study explores the development and comprehensive evaluation of titanium dioxide (TiO₂)-doped, thermally crosslinked sulfonated poly(ether ether ketone) (SPEEK)/poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) blend membranes for microbial fuel cell (MFC) applications. The membranes were synthesized with varying TiO₂ concentrations and characterized through analyses of water content, ion exchange capacity, swelling behavior, mechanical strength, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Incorporation of TiO₂ significantly enhanced proton conductivity and reduced water-induced mass loss compared to undoped membranes. Among the various compositions, the membrane containing 5 wt% TiO₂ (SPEEK/PVA-5T) demonstrated the highest proton conductivity of 0.4346 S cm⁻¹ at 25 °C, indicating superior performance. The membranes were tested in a cylindrical H-type MFC setup. The SPEEK/PVA-5T membrane achieved a maximum voltage output of 560.610 mV and a power density of 62.856 μW m⁻², in comparison to a commercial Nafion 117 membrane, which delivered 777.740 mV and 120.975 μW m⁻². These findings underscore the potential of the SPEEK/PVA-5T membrane as an effective and sustainable alternative for MFC applications, offering enhanced ion transport and contributing to the advancement of carbon-neutral energy technologies. This work represents a meaningful step toward the development of high-performance, eco-friendly membrane materials for renewable energy systems. © 2025 The Author(s). Polymer International published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.

Water-in-oil Pickering high internal phase emulsion (Pickering-HIPE) of dicylopentadiene (DCPD) was prepared by using block copolymer surface-modified calcite (mCalcite) particles. To evaluate the contribution of mCalcite particles comparatively, a neat polyHIPE was first synthesized from a conventional DCPD-based water-in-oil HIPE. SEM analysis demonstrated that polymerization of DCPD-based HIPE and Pickering-HIPE yielded open-porous supporting materials. Mechanical tests showed that mCalcite incorporation significantly improved the compressive modulus of the obtained material compared to the neat support. Tetradecanoic acid (TDA) was used as phase change material (PCM) and was successfully incorporated into the synthesized supporting foams via a solvent-assisted vacuum process. TDA presence in the composite PCM foams, named polyDCPD/TDA and polyDCPD/mCalcite/TDA, was examined based on Brunauer–Emmett–Teller-specific surface area measurement and SEM imaging. The latent heat storage properties and thermal stabilities of the resulting composite PCMs were evaluated by DSC and TGA measurements. The melting temperature and latent heat of melting of the composite PCMs were respectively detected as 52.4 °C and 68.2 J g⁻¹ for polyDCPD/mCalcite/TDA and 52.6 °C and 50.1 J g⁻¹ for polyDCPD/TDA, from DSC thermograms. It was demonstrated that the leak-resistive polyDCPD/mCalcite/TDA exhibited higher thermal stability in comparison with polyDCPD/TDA. Finally, it was concluded that Pickering-polyHIPE supported composite PCM can be efficiently used for low-temperature passive thermal management applications such as solar energy storage, thermal protection of electronic devices etc. © 2025 The Author(s). Polymer International published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.