Eco-Friendly Aliphatic Polyesters Containing 1,4-Cyclohexane Dicarboxylate Units: Effect of Diol Chain Length on Thermo-Mechanical Properties

Aliphatic polyesters containing 1,4-cyclohexylene rings are an interesting class of materials, not yet fully investigated. They potentially have the good characteristics typical of biopolyesters (for example, polyalkylene dicarboxylates and polyhydroxy alkanoates), such as sustainability and biodegradability. Indeed, renewable biomass resources can be used as feedstock to prepare the monomers and some preliminary tests of biodegradation suggest that the aliphatic rings do not hinder the microorganism attack.1 Moreover, the presence of cyclohexyl groups into the main chain provides rigidity to macromolecular chains, raises Tg, and imparts desirable physical-mechanical properties. In this way, the problem of the poor mechanical properties generally found in aliphatic polyesters can be solved. Finally, the 1,4-cyclohexylene unit shows the other remarkable peculiarity that it can have two possible configurations, cis and trans. In a polymer containing the 1,4-cyclohexylene rings, it will suffice to slightly modify the cis/trans isomeric ratio to obtain materials whose phase behavior changes from fully amorphous to semicrystalline.2 Therefore, the final properties of these materials can be easily tailored according to the specific applications. In this work diols with different chain length were tested as monomers for novel polyesters and the effects of the molecular characteristics on final properties were analyzed