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Novel Polymeric Material Design, Characterization, Properties and Applications in Energy and the Environment

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A special issue of Polymers (ISSN 2073-4360). This special issue belongs to the section "Circular and Green Polymer Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2021) | Viewed by 8476

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Lu Han

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Guest Editor

Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Chemical Sciences Division, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA
Interests: polymer synthesis; 3D printing;wafer-level packaging;adhesion;thermoset material; high performance material

Dr. Jiadeng Zhu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37830, USA
Interests: polymers; energy; fibers; biomaterials; low-dimensional materials
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Kan Zhang

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Guest Editor

School of Materials Science and Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu 212013, China
Interests: molecular design; benzoxazine; polybenzoxazine; thermosetting resins; bio-based polymers; green chemistry; high-performance polymers; fiber-reinforced composites
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Tong Li

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Department of Chemistry, University of Victoria, PO Box 3065 STN CSC, Victoria, BC, Canada
Interests: ring-opening metathesis polymerization and frontal polymerization; functionalization and modification of polydicyclopentadiene; thermoset crosslinking; polymer processing design including reaction injection molding; scaling up organic small molecules and polymers; block copolymers fabrication; thin films characterization

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We had the honor of being invited by the Editor of Polymers (MDPI) to coordinate a Special Issue titled “Novel Polymeric Material Design, Characterization, Properties and Applications in Energy and the Environment”.

This Special Issue is motivated by the observed fact that polymers have been widely used in our daily life, and there is an ever-growing interest in novel polymeric materials generated for highly demanding areas, such as energy storage, environmental protection, etc., due to the fast development of industry and remarkable growth of the population. Given the large number of possible structures in polymers, what guides to likely properties are available?

Polymers’ molecular structures significantly influence their physical and chemical properties. One of the major challenges is designing polymeric materials with unique structures to achieve desired properties, unveiling the structure–property relationships and taking appropriate characterization approaches. With the aim of presenting novel polymeric materials, the journal has launched this Special Issue “Novel Polymeric Material Design, Characterization, Properties and Applications in Energy and the Environment” to showcase up-to-date polymeric materials within those specific fields. This Special Issue welcomes manuscripts in the form of full papers, reviews, perspectives and communications.

We look forward to collaborating with you on this Special Issue!

Dr. Jiadeng Zhu
Prof. Dr. Kan Zhang
Dr. Lu Han
Dr. Tong Li
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Polymers is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Polymers
Energy
Environment
Novel structures
Properties
Advanced characteristic methods
Structure–property relationships

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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12 pages, 2868 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Study on the Synthesis, Curing Behavior and Flame Retardance of a Novel Flame Retardant Curing Agent for Epoxy Resin

by Yong Sun, Yongli Peng and Yajiao Zhang

Polymers 2022, 14(2), 245; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/polym14020245 - 07 Jan 2022

Cited by 14 | Viewed by 2263

Abstract

In this work, a flame retardant curing agent (DOPO-MAC) composed of 9,10-dihydro-9-oxa-10-phosphaphenanthrene-10-oxide DOPO and methyl acrylamide (MAC) was synthesized successfully, and the structure of the compound was characterized by FT-IR and ¹H-NMR. The non-isothermal kinetics of the epoxy resin/DOPO-MAC system with 1% phosphorus was studied by non-isothermal DSC method. The activation energy of the reaction (Ea), about 46 kJ/mol, was calculated by Kissinger and Ozawa method, indicating that the curing reaction was easy to carry out. The flame retardancy of the epoxy resin system was analyzed by vertical combustion test (UL94) and limiting oxygen index (LOI) test. The results showed that epoxy resin (EP) with 1% phosphorus successfully passed a UL-94 V-0 rating, and the LOI value increased along with the increasing of phosphorus content. It confirmed that DOPO-MAC possessed excellent flame retardance and higher curing reactivity. Moreover, the thermal stability of EP materials was also investigated by TGA. With the DOPO-MAC added, the residual mass of EP materials increased remarkably although the initial decomposition temperature decreased slightly. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Novel Polymeric Material Design, Characterization, Properties and Applications in Energy and the Environment)

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19 pages, 3712 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Plasticized Sodium-Ion Conducting PVA Based Polymer Electrolyte for Electrochemical Energy Storage—EEC Modeling, Transport Properties, and Charge-Discharge Characteristics

by Shujahadeen B. Aziz, Muaffaq M. Nofal, Rebar T. Abdulwahid, Hewa O. Ghareeb, Elham M. A. Dannoun, Ranjdar M. Abdullah, M. H. Hamsan and M. F. Z. Kadir

Polymers 2021, 13(5), 803; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/polym13050803 - 05 Mar 2021

Cited by 22 | Viewed by 2816

Abstract

This report presents the preparation of plasticized sodium ion-conducting polymer electrolytes based on polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)via solution cast technique. The prepared plasticized polymer electrolytes were utilized in the device fabrication of electrical double-layer capacitors (EDLCs). On an assembly EDLC system, cyclic voltammetry (CV), electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), linear sweep voltammetry (LSV), transfer number measurement (TNM) and charge–discharging responses were performed. The influence of plasticization on polymer electrolytes was investigated in terms of electrochemical properties applying EIS and TNM. The EIS was fitted with electrical equivalent circuit (EEC) models and ion transport parameters were estimated with the highest conductivity of 1.17 × 10⁻³ S cm⁻¹ was recorded. The CV and charge-discharging responses were used to evaluate the capacitance and the equivalent series resistance (ESR), respectively. The ESR of the highest conductive sample was found to be 91.2

Ω

at the first cycle, with the decomposition voltage of 2.12 V. The TNM measurement has shown the dominancy of ions with t_ion = 0.982 for the highest conducting sample. The absence of redox peaks was proved via CV, indicating the charge storing process that comprised ion accumulation at the interfacial region. The fabricated EDLC device is stable for up to 400 cycles. At the first cycle, a high specific capacitance of 169 F/g, an energy density of 19 Wh/kg, and a power density of 600 W/kg were obtained. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Novel Polymeric Material Design, Characterization, Properties and Applications in Energy and the Environment)

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Review

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10 pages, 1146 KiB

Open AccessReview

Recent Progress of High Performance Thermosets Based on Norbornene Functional Benzoxazine Resins

by Yin Lu, Xinye Yu, Lu Han and Kan Zhang

Polymers 2021, 13(9), 1417; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/polym13091417 - 27 Apr 2021

Cited by 19 | Viewed by 2556

Abstract

With the growing demand for high performance polymeric materials in industry, several types of thermosets such as bismaleimides, advanced epoxy resins, cyanate esters, and phenolic resins have been widely investigated to improve the performance of thermosetting products. Among them, benzoxazine resins have received wide attention due to their extraordinarily rich molecular design flexibility, which can customize our needs and adapt increasing requirements. To further improve the properties of polybenzoxiazines, researchers have found that the introduction of a norbornene functional group into the benzoxazine moiety can effectively improve the comprehensive performance of polybenzoxazine thermosets. This article focused on reviewing the recent development of high-performance thermosets based on norbornene functional benzoxazine thermosetting resins. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Novel Polymeric Material Design, Characterization, Properties and Applications in Energy and the Environment)

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