Difunctional cyanoacrylate monomers

Literature articles, which report the formation and evaluation of difunctional cyanoacrylate monomers, have been published. The preparation of the difunctional monomers required an alternative synthetic method than the standard Knoevenagel reaction for the monofunctional monomers, because the crosslinked polymer thermally decomposes before it can revert back to the free monomer. The earliest report for the preparation of a difunctional cyanoacrylate monomer involved a reverse Diels-Alder reaction of a dicyanoacrylate precursor [16,17]. Later reports described a transesterification with a dicyanoacrylic acid [18] or their formation from the oxidation of a diphenylselenide precursor, seen in Eq. 3 for the dicyanoacrylate ester of butanediol, 7 [6]. 

Solvent swelling experiments, with CH2CI2 and ECA polymer crosslinked with 7, demonstrate that the addition of a difunctional cyanoacrylate monomer does improve solvent resistance [6], shown in Fig. 1. 

Crosslinking has been claimed to improve thermal resistance of the cyanoacrylate adhesive [18]. However, in other reports [6], little or no improvement in thermal resistance of the adhesive was demonstrated by the addition of a difunctional monomer. As seen in Fig. 2, the addition of varying amounts of crosslinker 7 provided no improvement in the tensile adhesive strength of ethyl cyanoacrylate on steel lapshears after thermal exposure at 121 °C for up to 48 h. 

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