Esterification hindered components

Further esterification increases the solubility but is accompanied by considerable degradation of wood components. Solubilization seems to be hindered by both lignin and hemicellulose (76, 77). 

In the copolymers described in Sect. 3.4, the multiple components of the system are joined by chemical bonds and demixing, needed for complete phase separation of the components, is strongly hindered and may lead to partial or complete decoupling from crystallization. The resulting product is then a metastable micro- or nanophase-separated system with arrested, local equilibria. In some cases, however, it is possible to change the copolymer composition during the crystallization or melting by chemical reactions, such as trans-esterification or -amidation. In this case, the chemical and physical equilibrium must both be considered and a phase separation of the copolymer into either crystalline homopolymers or block copolymers is possible. 

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