ABSTRACT: Biomass-based polymeric materials have recently garnered a lot of attention from both academic and industrial realms, owing to their important roles for addressing environ-mental issues and achieving sustainable developments. As one of the cheapest and most widely available biomass feedstock,

plant oils are promising to produce polymeric materials for replacing petroleum-based counterparts. However, there is lack of a green and highly effective method to prepare outstanding plant oil-based polymeric materials, limiting their potential applicability. In this work, surfactant-free RAFT-mediated emulsion polymerization was explored for the fabrication of plant oil-based ethanol aqueous adhesives. A series of plant oil-based ethanol aqueous adhesives have been successfully fabricated by introducing thymine-containing monomers to tackify the adhesives. The obtained ethanol aqueous adhesives showcase outstanding adhesive properties for distinct substrates and tunable adhesive performance upon UV irradiation. This work highlights that surfactant-free RAFT-mediated emulsion polymerization is a straightforward and feasible approach to fabricate prominent polymeric materials including adhesives or coatings from biomass feedstock such as plant oils.
KEYWORDS: plant oils, green chemistry, renewable, RAFT, block copolymers, adhesives