Effect of Soft Chain Types on Polycarbonate Diol-based Polyurethane Elastomers

Abstract

Polyurethane elastomers (PUEs) have been synthesized with polycarbonate diol synthesized from 1, 4-butanediol (C4PCDL) and 1, 6-butanediol (C6PCDL), polycaprolactone diol (PCL) as well as polytetrahydrofuran ether diol (PTMG) as soft segments respectively, with Isopharone diisocyanate (IPDI) and 1, 4-butanediol as hard segments. The PUEs composed of four different soft chains are called PUE1, PUE2, PUE3 and PUE4, whose structure, mechanical and thermal properties and light transmittance have been tested with the aim to analyze the effect of the structure of the soft chain on the properties. The experimental results indicate that PUEs successfully be synthesized with the prepolymer method. The stronger the polarity of the soft chains is, the greater the tensile strength, hardness and heat-resistant quality of the PUEs is. With the increase of the flexibility of the soft chain of the PUEs, its elongation at break will increase and Tg will decrease and the light transmittance of it is affected by the degree of phase separation. Specifically, the greater the degree of phase separation is, the lower the transmittance is. The tensile strength of PUE1 reaches 39.82 MPa, the hardness reaches 93.9 Shore A, and the Td5% reaches 308.9 ℃. Without this, its transmittance also reached 92.31%.