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Natural sciences
- Macromolecular and materials chemistry not elsewhere classified
- Organic green chemistry
- Sustainable chemistry not elsewhere classified
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Engineering and technology
- Polymers and plastics
Elastomers are crucial materials in today’s society because of their unique set of properties. Unfortunately, because of their permanent crosslinked nature, they are not recyclable and therefore contribute the surge of plastic pollution. Tremendous efforts to tackle this issue have been made in past decades but did not provide a satisfying solution yet. The main objective of this project is the preparation of industrially used, thermosetting rubbers that are inherently (re)processable and recyclable, thus contributing towards a circular economy. To this end, dynamic covalent bonds will be installed by making use of tailored sulfur-based curing agents for the crosslinking of industrial rubbers. As their reversible character will only be activated at elevated temperatures (120 – 160 °C), a myriad of potential rubber applications can be targeted, in which thermal stability, solvent resistance and creep resistance are desired. For this, two in-house developed chemical platforms will be utilised: transalkylation of trialkylsulfonium salts and the thioacetal exchange. In a final stage, the project aims to develop rubbers that could potentially replace part of the traditional non-recyclable rubbers. Thus, also the influence of fillers will be considered, and the prepared materials will be thoroughly evaluated and compared to current industrial state-of-the-art rubbers.