Progress in Biobased Vitrimers

Polymer products are widely used in our daily life. While plastics make modern life very convenient, there also two concomitant issues that need to be addressed immediately. First, plastic waste generated from the use of polymer materials is destroying the living environment. In particular, thermosetting polymers cannot be reprocessed once the crosslinked network structure forms. However, by introducing " vitrimer" chemistry to thermosets, damaged thermosetting polymers can be repaired, their service life can be extended, and plastic waste will be reduced. Second, the preparation of polymer materials often requires the consumption of non-renewable petrochemicals, which in turn increases industrial pollution. The use of renewable resources to prepare polymer materials could be an effective solution to slow down the consumption of fossil resources and reduce associated pollution. To promote greener polymer production, this paper reviews the recent research progress on bio-based vitrimer materials. First, the history and unique features of vitrimer materials are reviewed. These unique features, including repairability, recyclability and reprocessability, originate from the dynamic covalent crosslinks which often exhibit both associative and dissociative mechanisms. Second, recent developments in vitrimer preparation from vegetable oil, lignin, cellulose, natural rubber, rosin, vanillin and other biobased resources were reviewed, and the commonly involved dynamic covalent chemistries were discussed.