Sustainable one-pot synthesis of imide-containing polyesters with programmable structures and tunable performance†

Sustainably producing thermoplastics with well-defined structures across various material chemistries remains challenging. Herein, we report a new synthetic methodology for thermoplastic polyesters with side-chain imide groups via one-pot melt polycondensation enabled by thermodynamic imide ring and ester formation, using either a two-component system of amino diol/dicarboxylic acid or a three-component system of amino diol/diol/dicarboxylic acid. Unlike traditional trifunctional systems, the amino groups of amino diols are fully converted into imide without cross-linking. This methodology was inspired by the model reaction of amino alcohol and dicarboxylic acid to form di(ester imide) via melt condensation, where the esterification, imidization and molecular chain propagation mechanisms can be extended to polymerization. The resulting series of imide-containing polyesters exhibited controllable weight-average molecular weights up to 110.8 kDa, a wide range of glass transition temperatures (−24.6 to 115.4 °C), and tunable mechanical properties with ultimate tensile strengths ranging from 8.0 to 34.5 MPa and elongations at break up to 472%. The programmable one-pot synthesis technology has extensive potential for sustainable and functional materials.