Microcosmic mechanism of metal–organic framework enhanced thermoplastic polyurethane exposed to laser-induced shock wave

Incorporating nano-particles into polymer matrix has enabled improving shock wave mitigation (SWM) ability. Vast majority of researchers adopted inorganic nano-materials to enhance polymer matrix. Due to the incompatibility between inorganic nano-particles and polymers, complicated interface modification processes were often used. Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have good compatibility with polymers and show excellent SWM capabilities. However, they are brittle and experience lattice collapse after shock loading. Based on this, thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) enhanced by zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) was proposed and prepared. The mixtures can not only improve the SWM ability of polymers, but also address the brittleness of MOFs. Additionally, scholars often use simulation methods to study energy dissipation mechanism of materials, rarely evidences of microstructural changes observed to support theoretical speculations. In this work, by analyzing surface morphology and molecular structural changes, energy dissipative mechanism was investigated. With addition amount of 5 wt% and 10 wt% ZIF-8 particles in TPU, the pressure can be reduced by 0.074 GPa and 0.1478 GPa than neat TPU. TPUM-10 had a stronger deformation resistance and SWM ability. Moreover, main chemical structures were remained unchanged after shock. The increased ability of SWM may relate to hydrogen bond forming process and delayed material failure.