Dimer fatty acids : Building blocks for a multitude of new biobased polymers - Towards a large range of applications

At high temperature, double bonds of unsaturated fatty acids (from vegetable oils) may change their position to form conjugated structures, facilitating their dimerisation by Diels-Alder mechanism. This reaction leads to a mixture of compounds, such as dimers and trimmers of fatty acids. After purification, the dimer fatty acids can be used as raw materials or modified e.g., for the synthesis of biobased polymers.

The activity of the BioTeam at University of Strasbourg (France) is mainly focused on the development of new biobased polymer systems. In this context, we have developed in collaboration with different industrial partners, a large variety of new macromolecular architectures (polymers) based on dimer fatty acids such as :
a. TPUs, which can be partially of fully biobased,
b. Polyamides,
c. Polyetheramides …

From these polymers, different multiphase systems can be formulated with specific performances to fulfill the requirements of a large range of applications and numerous fields such as automotive industry, consumer or domestic equipment, construction engineering...