Recyclability of ESOF-Ix Materials Enabled by Dynamic Diels-Alder Bonds

In addition, the inclusion of dynamic Diels-Alder bonds bestowed ESOF-Ix with the ability to undergo recycling. As illustrated in Figure 6a, a fragment of ESOF-I1.0 film was fragmented and subsequently subjected to hot pressing at 130℃ and 10 MPa for 1 hour. As a result, an intact film without any visible defects was obtained. This recycling process could be repeated up to three times, and subsequent tensile tests were conducted to evaluate the efficacy of the recycling. As depicted in Figure 6a, the stress-strain curve of ESOF-I1.0 displayed a similar pattern after each cycle. After subjecting the material to three cycles of hot pressing, DSC tests revealed that the Tg did not undergo significant changes in comparison to the original sample, indicating that the crosslinking density remained constant while the network structure was adjusted (Figure 6b). The ability to retain properties in the recycled networks can be attributed to the abundance of dynamic Diels-Alder bonds, which facilitate the reorganization of the network topology.