Polymer design: tailoring the materials properties according to the industrial demands

The industry requests are various and usually driven by several factors, like environmental sustainability, product and process costs, market availability of reactants, and consumers perception. From time to time, Industry addresses to Academia different questions relating to the possibility to improve product performances, decrease environmental impact, limit production costs, and optimize material recycling. In order to tackle such a range of issues, the deep investigation on polymeric chemical structures as well as structure-property relationships allow to design a priori the materials able to satisfy the industrial needs. As examples, in order to enlarge the applications of barrier polymers, water solubility can be imparted to the poly(hexamethylene isophthalamide) by introducing a low amount of sulfonated groups along the macromolecular chains. The macromolecular rigidity of poly(m-xylylene adipamide) can be modulated by using monomers bearing asymmetric aromatic rings or short aliphatic chains. Otherwise, the gas barrier properties of poly(propylene 2,5- furandicarboxylate) can be notably increased by controlling the crystallization process. On the other hand, the end-used poly(ethylene terephthalate) and bisphenol A polycarbonate can be conveniently recycled and exploited in powder coating applications through its depolymerization/repolymerization with suitable monomers.