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Adrian Wambach, Seema Agarwal, Andreas Greiner

ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng. 2020, 8, 39, 14690–14693 https://doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.0c04335

There is an urgent need for biobased raw materials, which are not food relevant and could serve as the base for novel sustainable polymers. Menthol is such a potential material, which is available in plenty from nature and also technically. We report here a challenging copolymerization of menth-2-ene oxide derived from menthol and CO₂ in the presence of a β-diiminate zinc complex which resulted in high molecular weight poly(menth-2-ene carbonate) (PMen2C). PMen2C shows a high glass transition temperature in combination with exceptional thermal stability, which is unusual for aliphatic polycarbonates and of utmost importance for melt processing. With a high thermal stability, PMen2C could be developed to a sustainable engineering polymer material.