Biobased Anethole/Polyacrylate Cross-Linked Materials with Good Transparency and High Thermostability

A series of new thermo-cross-linkable polymers with both excellent transparency and thermostability derived from a biorenewable plant oil (anethole) are reported here. By using the plant oil as the feedstock, a new monomer (anethole-based acrylate) containing propenyl and acryloyl functional units is successfully synthesized via a simple two-step reaction route. Copolymerizing the monomer with methyl acrylate (MA) in the presence of radical initiator gives the copolymers, which are postpolymerized at high temperature to form the polymers, exhibiting the thermostability and the transmittance depending on the content of the anethole-based acrylate. With the increasing of the content of the anethole-based acrylate, the thermostability of the cross-linked polymers raises while the transparency decreases. The best results are obtained when the molar ratio between methyl acrylate and anethole-based acrylate is 2:1. In that case, the cured polymer shows a glass transition temperature (Tg) of 148 °C and a coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of 152.58 ppm/°C, as well as high transparency with the transmittance of more than 92% from 450 to 1100 nm. These data exhibit that the new acrylate-containing polymers derivated from a biorenewable can be used as the high performance optical materials with both good transparency and high thermostability.