Photocurable extended vanillin-based resin for mechanically and chemically recyclable, self-healable and digital light processing 3D printable thermosets

A vanillin-based photocurable resin was designed for circularity by incorporation of imine functionalities through a Schiff-base reaction between the aldehyde function of vanillin and amino group of ethylene diamine. Sufficient flexibility was provided by a short aliphatic segment introduced by reaction of vanillin with ethylene carbonate, while photocurability was obtained by subsequent methacrylation. The cured thermoset had good solvent resistance, relatively high glass transition temperature (∼75 °C) and good thermal stability with an onset of degradation above 300 °C. Due to the crosslinked structure and imine linkages, the thermoset expressed malleability, self-healing and thermal reprocessability. Furthermore, it could be chemically recycled by immersing in ethylene diamine, which activated transimination. The obtained oligomeric product with amine-terminal groups could be utilized for production of new thermoset films. Tensile testing illustrated similar elastic modulus for mechanically and chemically recycled thermosets, while a slight increase was observed for the self-healed samples, ascribable to a completion of the curing during the post-processing. At the same time elongation and stress at break slightly decreased. Finally, the suitability of the resin for the production of 3D objects by means of digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing was demonstrated.