Isothermal Kinetics of Poly(butylene adipate- co-butylene itaconate) Copolyesters with Ethylenediaminetetraacetic Acid

Chin-Wen Chen; Te-Sheng Hsu; Syang-Peng Rwei

doi:10.1021/acsomega.9b04315

Isothermal Kinetics of Poly(butylene adipate- co-butylene itaconate) Copolyesters with Ethylenediaminetetraacetic Acid

ACS Omega. 2020 Feb 6;5(6):3080-3089. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.9b04315. eCollection 2020 Feb 18.

Authors

Chin-Wen Chen¹, Te-Sheng Hsu¹, Syang-Peng Rwei¹

Affiliation

¹ Institute of Organic and Polymeric Materials, Research and Development Center of Smart Textile Technology, National Taipei University of Technology, No. 1, Sec. 3, Chung-Hsiao East Road, Taipei 10608, Taiwan (ROC).

Abstract

A series of aliphatic copolyesters, poly(butylene adipate-co-butylene itaconate) (PBABI), have been synthesized using melt polycondensation of adipic acid (AA), itaconic acid (IA), 1,4-butanediol (1,4-BDO), and the tetra-functional group of ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA, 0.1 mol %) to form partially cross-linking density as novel thermoplastic unsaturated copolyesters in our previous research. The crystal phase of PBABI copolyesters tended to prefer thermodynamics in the presence of a small amount of EDTA. The isothermal crystallization analysis revealed that the PBABI with EDTA exhibited a higher crystallization rate and a shorter half-time of crystallization than neat PBABI copolyesters. All of the sizes of spherulite/sheet crystals in the BA/BI = 9/1 are smaller than at BA/BI = 10/0 with or without a cross-linking agent, which demonstrated that the morphology behavior tended to form a small sheet crystal in the presence of 10 mol % IA, which played a dominant role in determining the average size of the crystal. These results deepen our understanding of the relationship among the cross-linking agent, the crystal form, and solidification time in PBABI copolyesters, making these kinds of polymers applicable to reinforce three-dimensional (3D) air-permeable polyester-based smart textiles.