During the last two decades, the synthesis of polymers from renewable resources has attracted considerable attention of research workers throughout the world because of the escalating prices of petrochemicals and high rate of depletion of the natural mineral resources. This necessitates a look at the renewable natural resources that can serve as alternative feed stock for monomers of the polymer industry. In this respect the oils of certain seeds, hold considerable promise as a source of unsaturated hydrocarbon, an excellent starting material for epoxidation and subsequent polymer production. The main objectives of the present studies was to epoxidized the unsaturated oil by in situ peracetic acid and cure it with conventional hardener like polyamide which was further modified by blending with natural polymers like starch and alike polymers to develop biomaterials. A detail investigation of the modified materials was carried out by various techniques/methods. The modified materials or blended materials were evaluated for their physico-chemical, mechanical, spectroscopical and thermal behaviour. A detail study of their external stimuli responsive characteristics was also carried out.

Extraction of oil, its characterization, epoxidation and further characterization of the epoxidized oil by physico-chemical analysis, GC, Gel Permeation Chromatography, FT-IR, NMR, DSC & TGA were studied. Molecular weight and polydispersity was determined by GPC. The epoxidized oil were found to be of low molecular weight with a polydispersity of unity showing that ECTO & EJCO had a fairly homogeneous structure and that ECTO is of high molecular weight than EJCO.

Curing and blending of epoxidized oil: ECTO with polyamide and natural polymer i.e., starch or gum acacia respectively. The cured & blended products have been characterized by spectroscopic techniques; FT-IR and 1H-NMR, DSC, TGA and Mechanical strength as well as various physico-chemical tests were carried out. FT-IR & 1H-NMR spectroscopic techniques confirmed the curing of epoxidized Chukrasia tabularis oil with polyamide. The curing took place at the site of oxygen ring resulting in epoxy ring opening which is accompanied by prominent peak disappearance of 1H-NMR signal at d = 2.9 ppm, the characteristic peak of epoxy ring present in the epoxidized oil of Chukrasia tabularis. Mechanical strength was tested for the blended polymeric films where the EP (epoxy-polyamide) cured films showed very flexible as compared to the starch blended films which showed brittleness in characters. The blended polymeric films developed were studied for its swelling behaviour at different temperatures, pH, ionic strength, types of buffer. It was investigated that all the polymeric films or hydrogels showed maximum swelling in acidic medium. The equilibrium and oscillatory swelling behaviour have also been investigated in response to change in the pH of the swelling media.

The new low molecular weight soluble polymers were synthesized by reacting Chukrasia tabularis oil with monocarboxylic acid in the presence of tetrabutylammonium halide salt (catalyst). The in vitro biocompatibility based on the epoxy-polyamide/starch blended polymers was investigated. It was observed that for the selected cell line cultured on the polymer do not induced cytotoxicity effects.