Morphology and properties of thermoplastic polyether polyurethane based on IPDI

A series of novel segmented thermoplastic polyether polyurethane elastomers based on tetrahydrofuran-ethylene oxide copolyether [P(E-Co-T)] as the soft segments and isophorone diisocyanate (IPDI) extended with 1, 4-butanediol (BDO) as the hard segments were synthesized to study the relationships between morphology and properties. The experimental techniques utilized were tensile testing, DSC, DMA, TEM and WAXD. The results show that the TPUs have typical microphase separation, it as well as the stress increase with hard-segment concentration increasing, while the strain decreases. WAXD results indicate that all elastomers are completely amorphous at all levels of hard-segment concentration. When the hard-segment concentration is controlled in 45%-50%, the integrative properties of TPU are optimum.