Sustainably sourced components to generate high-strength adhesives.

Nearly all adhesives are derived from petroleum, create permanent bonds, frustrate materials separation for recycling and prevent degradation in landfills. When trying to shift from petroleum feedstocks to a sustainable materials ecosystem, available options suffer from low performance, high cost or lack of availability at the required scales. Here we present a sustainably sourced adhesive system, made from epoxidized soy oil, malic acid and tannic acid, with performance comparable to that of current industrial products.

Synthesis of Terpolymers at Mild Temperatures Using Dynamic Sulfur Bonds in Poly(S-Divinylbenzene).

Elemental sulfur (S8) is a byproduct of the petroleum industry with millions of tons produced annually. Such abundant production and limited applications lead to sulfur as a cost-efficient reagent for polymer synthesis. Inverse vulcanization combines elemental sulfur with a variety of monomers to form functional polysulfides without the need for solvents.