Water-Borne Thermosets from Aniline-Based Telechelics

Current trends in the polymer coatings arena focus on water-borne formulations due to the obvious economic and environmental advantages of these systems devoid of organic solvents. This, coupled with the recent findings of the efficacy of polyaniline in corrosion prevention of metals, has provided impetus in the synthesis of water-borne thermosets from aniline-based telechelics. The first part of the project demonstrates the feasibility of the synthesis of telechelics with differing sizes and the second part deals with its derivatization to water-borne systems. Thus, a series of aniline-based telechelics have been made by varying the ratio of the reactants, viz. phenylenediamine and aniline, the amount of oxidant (ammonium persulfate) as well as temperature. Combined with higher solubility and reactivity, curing of the functionally reactive amino-terminated oligomers have been accomplished using aqueous formaldehyde or water-dispersed epoxy resins. Spectroscopic studies have been carried out to characterize some of the prepolymers as well as cured materials.