The use of renewable resources for the synthesis of macromolecular materials is a very promising strategy, which opens the way to the production of new polymers with a reduced environmental impact. Vegetable oils have been considered for this purpose for decades, with many well established commercial materials. Herein, tung oil and its major fatty acid methyl ester were submitted for the first time to cationic polymerization using trifluoroacetic acid as an initiator of moderate strength. While crude tung oil quickly polymerized to form crosslinked gel-like materials, the cationic polymers from methyl α-eleostearate remained soluble even when high concentrations of acid were used, thus allowing its progress to be followed by NMR spectroscopy. Besides gathering information on the properties of the isolated polymers, it was therefore possible to access some important mechanistical aspects related to both the cationic polymerization and the cyclization of the conjugated trienes borne by the tung oil backbone.

将可再生资源用于高分子材料的合成是非常有前途的策略，这为减少环境影响的新型聚合物的生产开辟了道路。为此目的，已经使用许多成熟的商业原料考虑了植物油数十年。在此，桐油及其主要脂肪酸甲酯首次使用三氟乙酸作为中等强度的引发剂进行阳离子聚合。尽管粗桐油迅速聚合形成交联的凝胶状材料，但是即使使用高浓度的酸，α-硬脂酸甲酯的阳离子聚合物仍然可溶，因此可以通过NMR光谱追踪其进展。除了收集有关分离出的聚合物特性的信息外，