Biography
Biography: M. Fuentes Sainz
Abstract
The use of readily available and naturally occurring feedstocks to overcome our reliance upon petroleum derived materials is a growing challenge for our society. One of the most attractive alternatives are terpenes, due to their natural abundance, their structural diversity and their availability from citrus and wood waste streams in the multi-tonne scale. There have been significant efforts in the past to create polymers from terpenes, but extensive studies have to date yielded only a few examples of low Mn, low Tg or cross-linked polymers. Therefore polymeric materials obtained from terpenes are still very limited. Our approach consisted on functionalising a wide range of terpenes to create a variety of new acrylate and methacrylate monomers, via a 2-step methodology or a catalytic route, in a 50g scale. These new terpene derived monomers are easily polymerisable via free radical or controlled/living polymerisation. A variety of linear, branched and crosslinked polymers has been synthesised in a controlled fashion yielding polymers with very different properties and Tgs ranging between -18 and 142 o C