Trading in silicone for soybeans

In the article “Acrylated soybean oil: a key intermediate for more sustainable elastomeric materials from silicones”, Melendez-Zamudio et al. explain how silicone elastomers have a wide variety of uses in different inducstries due to their beneficial properties, but their synthesis requires a high energy input. This study demonstrates that the amount of silicone needed for various applications can be significantly reduced by creating silicone composites using soybean oil. By linking acrylated soybean oil with aminoalkylsilicones through a catalyst-free aza-Michael reaction, the researchers were able to produce opaque elastomers that exhibit similar characteristics to traditional silicone elastomers in terms of durometer, surface energy, and thermal stability. While the resulting products are stable in boiling water, they readily degrade through basic alcoholysis in ethanol, yielding processable oils. Read Full Article