The Triple Catalytic Action of Tertiary Nitrogen Catalysts in Recyclable Epoxy‐Anhydride Thermosets

ABSTRACT The thermosetting polymer matrix in fiber reinforced composites is an important component for energy related applications, such as the lightweighting of vehicles or their use in wind and waterpower turbine blades, due to their ability to provide superior adhesion, stiffness, and applicability to a wide range of manufacturing processes. Despite these benefits, today's thermosets are widely considered to be unrecyclable; thus, there is a large interest in redesigning these materials to be inherently recyclable so that energy intensive production of fibers and monomers can be circumvented, bolstering composite manufacture supply chains. Polyester covalent adaptable networks (PECANs) are one such promising alternative to the incumbent, nonrecyclable epoxy‐amine thermosets. PECANs can be formed from the ring‐opening co‐polymerization (ROCOP) of epoxy‐anhydride monomer mixtures and subsequent curing at mild temperatures to exhibit similar performance to conventional epoxies while also possessing unique dynamic chemistries along the ester‐hydroxyl backbone that are capable of transesterification and thus reprocessability. While significant advancements have been made in formulating these materials for improved mechanical properties or optimizing solvolysis and reprocessing strategies, less attention has been placed on the impact of the residing amine catalyst used to generate the polyester network. In this work, we evaluated the triple‐catalytic efficacy of 12 tertiary amines that act as a curing (bulk ROCOP), a transesterification (internal bond exchange), and a deconstruction (methanolysis) catalyst for PECAN thermosets. Specifically, we first distinguish between chain‐growth and step‐growth polymerization mechanisms for epoxy‐amine and epoxy‐anhydride mechanisms. We also utilized density functional theory (DFT) to estimate the basicity (pK b ) of each catalyst. Of the tested catalysts, the ROCOP of the studied PECAN network can be completed between 95 and 247 min (at 80°C), with variable gelation phenomena. Additionally, the stress relaxation (transesterification metric) efficiency of the tested PECAN networks with alternative embedded catalysts ranged from 95% to 15% reduction in stress after 5 h at 200°C, and the depolymerization efficacy ranged from 2.5% to 9.8% deconstruction after 36 h at 130°C. Overall, the nitrogen‐based moieties were demonstrated to influence polymerization kinetics, catalyze the dynamic transesterification exchange mechanism, and aid in the solvolysis of the thermosets at end‐of‐life.