Epoxy vitrimers: from essence to utility

Abstract Concerns about the effect on the environment and non-renewable nature of plastics have sparked a substantial field of study towards the creation of recyclable polymers. Vitrimers are a potential class of reusable polymers that have recently attracted a lot of interest. Like conventional thermosets in strength, durability, and chemical resistance, these materials offer the added benefit of being recyclable at the end of their useful life. Their chemical structure, which includes dynamic covalent crosslinks to provide stability while enabling reprocessing, is credited with this special characteristic. We lay out an overview of recent developments and their applications in epoxy based vitrimeric materials by using the different types of covalent adaptable networks (CANs) – single, dual and triple in this paper with a lot of attention on design tactics that make it easier to create circular materials of the future. Covalent Adaptable Networks (CAN), a novel polymer family that can bridge the gap between thermosets and thermoplastics, emerged in the recent years and uses dynamic covalent chemistry to crosslinked polymer networks. The field was enhanced in 2011 by Leibler and colleagues when they introduced the notion of vitrimers, which are crosslinked polymers that retain the integrity of their network even after heating and allow the covalent connections to be reallocated within them by associative exchange reactions. This review also demonstrates how the vitrimer community is paying attention to the need for sustainable material development by demonstrating the use of biobased building blocks in the synthesis of novel and high-performing vitrimers. Having outlined the primary characteristics of vitrimers, commercialization and development of vitrimers for different applications is emphasized to portray their benefits for self-healing, malleability, orthogonal processability, and various shape memories along with sustainable solutions to synthetic materials.