EPOXY/AMINE-BASED AMPHIPHILIC PHYSICAL GELS. EFFECT OF AMINE CHAIN LENGTH ONTO THE PHYSICAL PROPERTIES

I. A. ZUCCHI; J. PUIG; M. J. GALANTE; C. RODRÍGUEZ-ABREU; C.E. HOPPE; R. J. J. WILLIAMS

Los Cocos, Córdoba, Argentina

Simposio; V Argentine-Chilean Polymer Symposium, VIII Argentine Polymer Symposium y IX Chilean Symposium of Polymer Chemistry and Physical-Chemistry; 2009

In a previous work we showed that the reaction between diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A (DGEBA) and dodecylamine (DA) results in the formation of an amphiphilic linear polymer that undergoes a nanostructuration process by the self-assembly of dodecyl chains (Zucchi et al., 2007). This process was driven by the strong predisposition of alkyl chains towards self-assembling when immersed in a hydrophilic medium. The nanostructuration process took place above Tg (where the mobility of the alkyl chains was allowed) leading to a physical gel where the cross-links were formed by tail-to-tail associations among dodecyl chains. The resulting amphiphilic physical gel was very attractive as a matrix for hydrophobic additives (as alkyl coated nanoparticles, paraffins, etc) since the alkyl chains acted as stabilizers. Moreover, from the point of view of the processing, it was extremely versatile since it could be processed as a thermoplastic with the final properties of a network. Taking all these advantages into account, the purpose of this work is to extend the study to other alkyl amines like octylamine (OA) and hexadecylamine (HA) and analyze the effect of the amine chain length onto the final properties of the physical gel.