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Updated: Mar 26, 2026

Designed for Molecular Recycling: A Lignin-Derived Semi-aromatic Biobased Polymer
Published on: November 30, 2020
High Glass Transition Temperature Renewable Polymers via Biginelli Multicomponent Polymerization
Andreas C Boukis1, Audrey Llevot1, Michael A R Meier1
1Laboratory of Applied Chemistry, Institute of Organic Chemistry, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Fritz-Haber-Weg 6, Karlsruhe, 76131, Germany.
Abstract:
A novel and straightforward one-pot multicomponent polycondensation method was established in this work. The Biginelli reaction is a versatile multicomponent reaction of an aldehyde, a β-ketoester (acetoacetate) and urea, which can all be obtained from renewable resources, yielding diversely substituted 3,4-dihydropyrimidin-2(1H)-ones (DHMPs). In this study, renewable diacetoacetate monomers with different spacer chain lengths (C3, C6, C10, C20) were prepared via simple transesterification of renewable diols and commercial acetoacetates. The diacetoacetate monomers were then reacted with renewable dialdehydes, i.e., terephthalaldehyde and divanillin in a Biginelli type step-growth polymerization. The obtained DHMP polymers (polyDHMPs) displayed high molar masses, high glass transition temperatures (Tg) up to 203 °C and good thermal stability (Td5%) of 280 °C. The Tg of the polyDHMPs could be tuned by variation of the structure of the dialdehyde or the diacetoacetate component.
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