Understanding the Effect of Side Reactions on the Recyclability of Furan-Maleimide Resins Based on Thermoreversible Diels-Alder Network.

We studied the effect of side reactions on the reversibility of epoxy with thermoreversible Diels-Alder (DA) cycloadducts based on furan and maleimide chemistry. The most common side reaction is the maleimide homopolymerization which introduces irreversible crosslinking in the network adversely affecting the recyclability. The main challenge is that the temperatures at which maleimide homopolymerization can occur are approximately the same as the temperatures at which retro-DA (rDA) reactions depolymerize the networks.