ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Chem.
Sec. Green and Sustainable Chemistry
Enzymatic Synthesis of Bio-based Polyesters Derived from Vanillin
Cicely May Warne 1
Maria Jose Calandri 2
Myleidi Vera 3
Georg M Guebitz 1
Alessandro Pellis 2
1. Universitat fur Bodenkultur Wien, Vienna, Austria
2. University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy
3. Universidad de Concepcion, Concepción, Chile
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Abstract
Aromatic polymers are known for their thermal stability as well as their good mechanical properties, but most of these polymers are synthesised from fossil resources. Vanillin is one of the few aromatic chemicals that is currently commercially produced from biomass and can be derivatised to make it suitable for polycondensation reactions. In this work a vanillin-derived bio-based diol was synthesised exploiting the potential of more benign reagents to replace toxic dimethylformamide. The resulting monomer was utilised in a series of enzymatic polycondensation reactions with different diesters including dimethyl succinate (DMSu), dimethyl adipate (DMA) and dimethyl sebacate (DMSe), and the aromatic monomers diethyl terephthalate (DET), diethyl isophthalate (DEI), diethyl pyridine-2,5-dicarboxylate (PD25) and diethyl pyridine-2,4-dicarboxylate (PD24) using a lipase to produce semi-aromatic polyesters. The molecular weight of the resulting polyesters increased as the chain length of the diester decreased, with a number average molecular weight of 21.8 kDa for polyesters achieved based on the dimethyl succinate (using diphenyl ether (DPE) as the organic media). For semi-aromatic diesters, para-substituted monomers yielded higher molecular weight polymers compared to the corresponding meta-substituted structure. Several different green solvents were also investigated to carry out this reaction with anisole that resulted to be a good alternative to DPE with similar number average molecular weights obtained at certain conditions.
Summary
Keywords
Bio-based polymers, Biocatalysed synthesis, Enzymatic polycondensation, Green solvents, Lipase, vanillin-derived polyesters
Received
16 December 2025
Accepted
30 January 2026
Copyright
© 2026 Warne, Calandri, Vera, Guebitz and Pellis. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Cicely May Warne; Alessandro Pellis
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.