Ubirajara Pereira Rodrigues-Filho: Multifunctional Hydroxyurethanes as a Contribution for Mitigation of CO2

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a cheap C1 raw chemical and major contributor for Global Warming and many strategies are being studied to fight against its emissions around the Globe. Legislation and socio-education are essential for long-term approaches to minimize these effects. Nevertheless, it is important to propose short to medium-term strategies complementary to long-term actions. The sustainability of CO2 capture and geological storage (CCS) can be improved by employing the stored CO2 as raw material to produce valuable products as well as a negative emission concept could be applied for already carbon balanced processes. Therefore, the present studies show some insights on CO2 insertion into epoxides, thus obtaining versatile building-blocks for oligomer/polymer synthesis. CO2 insertion on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) diglycidyl ether terminated leads to precursor cyclocarbonates (CC) which by Ring Opening Polymerization with diamines lead to versatile non-isocyanate hydroxyurethanes (HU). Chain termination was achieved with 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) or the dopamine (DA) leading to materials with good handling properties. It turns out these Hus can form fluorescent composites, antimicrobial coatings. Ongoing work on the use of these new materials to produce photocatalytical solid state extraction devices as well as advanced high power electrical insulating materials are going to be presented.