Wonderful, but I wonder do Dr. Leibler still creating vitrimers by boronic ester? If so, he can't solve the urgent recycling problem by linking two abandoned polymers or reworking used polymers, as PMMA/HDPE which are still thermoplastic. Or he can change their property, from thermoplastic to vitrimers, which is better insoluble that the formal one?
You are right that you cannot mix PMMA/HDPE which do not have boronic ester cross-links. The idea is to have a multitude of polymers employing this type of chemistry. The next step is then to study morphology of two vitrimeric polymers that have different basis. So a PMMA and a HDPE that both contain boronic ester cross-links. There have been lots of studies of polymers which are usually incompatible without any compatibilizing additive that have better morphology once such an additive is added. What remains to be seen is that when you coextrude two polymers with boronic ester functionalities if their morphology will be fine. Then you could think about even combining polymers. But this is a whole other studies. To simply dismiss it as not possible is wrong though, since the potential is there (in my opinion).
That is Fantastic
Thank you for this video
Wonderful, but I wonder do Dr. Leibler still creating vitrimers by boronic ester? If so, he can't solve the urgent recycling problem by linking two abandoned polymers or reworking used polymers, as PMMA/HDPE which are still thermoplastic. Or he can change their property, from thermoplastic to vitrimers, which is better insoluble that the formal one?
You are right that you cannot mix PMMA/HDPE which do not have boronic ester cross-links. The idea is to have a multitude of polymers employing this type of chemistry.
The next step is then to study morphology of two vitrimeric polymers that have different basis. So a PMMA and a HDPE that both contain boronic ester cross-links. There have been lots of studies of polymers which are usually incompatible without any compatibilizing additive that have better morphology once such an additive is added.
What remains to be seen is that when you coextrude two polymers with boronic ester functionalities if their morphology will be fine. Then you could think about even combining polymers. But this is a whole other studies. To simply dismiss it as not possible is wrong though, since the potential is there (in my opinion).