Characterization of hydrophobic epoxy soybean oil-based rigid plastic reinforced with nano SiO2 particles

Abstract

The study involved the production of rigid plastics by crosslinking vanillin-hexanediamine (VH) with epoxidized soybean oil (ESO) through an open ring reaction, resulting in the formation of VHE resin. Various proportions of nano SiO2 particles were added to the VHE resin in order to produce hydrophobic rigid plastics derived from renewable sources. This study evaluated the impact of different mass ratios of nanoparticles to VHE resin (1:10, 1:5, 3:10) on the performance of the resulting plastics. FTIR and 13C NMR analysis have verified that VH has effectively undergone crosslinking with ESO, leading to the formation of VHE with a uniformly smooth surface that is free from pores and cracks. The introduction of nano SiO2 particles enhances the surface roughness and surface energy of the VHES plastics, resulting in hydrophobic properties, as evidenced by their high water contact angles. The addition of nano SiO2 particles improved the resistance of the VHES plastics to degradation caused by light, heat, and electricity. Nevertheless, the improvement is constrained to a maximum ratio of 1.5 (VHES2) and diminishes as the ratio of SiO2 particles increases (3:10). Furthermore, VHES2 samples demonstrated commendable biodegradability in addition to their previously mentioned exceptional properties. The study's findings suggest that vanillin and vegetable oil can be used to create biodegradable, hydrophobic plastic.