CD Laboratory for Organo-Catalysis in Polymerization

In order to be able to produce some high-quality plastics in a more environmentally friendly way, it would be desirable to replace necessary building blocks such as thioalcohols or amines with alcohols. Many alcohols can be produced directly from renewable raw materials in a sustainable way and are therefore usually cheaper and less toxic. However, alcohols are also much less reactive. The aim of this CD Laboratory, a pioneer in this field of research, is to increase the reactivity of alcohols and thus make them accessible as building blocks for plastics.

In many respects, plastics form the basis of the technologies available to us today. This is not just about plastic bags or plastic bottles, which could easily be replaced. Plastics are also used for bonding, painting or as corrosion protection, to name just a few examples in which plastics are indispensable today. It is therefore important to achieve cost-effective, environmentally friendly and yet precise and reproducible production of such plastics. One approach is to replace conventional building blocks, often toxic and foul-smelling sulphur or nitrogen compounds, and conventional catalysts, often toxic metal compounds.

Recently, a new field of research has been established that investigates catalysis, i.e. the acceleration of reactions by adding another substance using organic compounds. Such catalysts are usually easy to handle and less toxicologically problematic than conventional metal-based catalysts. The CD Laboratory now wants to study the potential of 'organo-catalysts' for the activation of alcohols and thus make them accessible as building blocks in polyaddition reactions. This would open the door to replacing thiols and amines, i.e. sulphur and nitrogen compounds, with the more readily available and therefore cheaper, less toxic and 'greener' alcohols. So far, this has failed due to the lower reactivity of alcohols, which require reactions to be carried out at high temperatures. However, thiols and amines also react at room temperature. After initial disappointing reports, attempts to react alcohols under these conditions were not pursued for a long time. In recent years, however, this picture has changed. Both our own research results and those of other research institutions have shown the first promising ways of overcoming this challenge. This has brought the fundamental scientific question of making alcohols usable as building blocks for polyaddition reactions under mild conditions back to the centre of scientific interest. In addition to the gain in basic scientific knowledge, successfully addressing this issue also harbours considerable socio-economic potential. Innovative companies have recognised this and are therefore pushing ahead with corresponding research work.

The CD Laboratory is now working with partner companies to advance the fundamentals and understanding of alcohol activation, develop customised organo-catalysts and investigate the properties of alcohol-based plastics in fastening technology and corrosion protection.