Microconfinement effect on gas barrier and mechanical properties of multilayer rigid/soft thermoplastic polyurethane films. Issue 18 (22nd January 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Huang, Rongzhi; Chari, Priyakrit; Tseng, Jung‐Kai; Zhang, Guojun; Cox, Mark; Maia, Joao M.
• Is Part Of: Journal of applied polymer science. Volume 132:Issue 18(2015:Sep. 15)
• Page Start: n/a
• Page End: n/a
• Publication Date: 2015-01-22
• Subjects: Polymers -- Periodicals; Polymerization -- Periodicals; 668.9
• DOI: 10.1002/app.41849
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0021-8995

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main"> <title>ABSTRACT</title> <p>In this article, rigid/soft thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) films were produced <italic>via</italic> layer‐multiplying co‐extrusion and the effect of confinement on morphology and gas barrier and mechanical properties is studied. The soft TPU, which is 52% hard‐segment, shows phase separation, while the rigid, 100% hard‐segment TPU exhibits amorphous structures. Even though the viscosity ratio of the two TPUs is over 10 and the elasticity ratio around 100, optical and atomic force microscopies show that a multilayer structure was successfully achieved. Then, the multilayer TPU films were uni‐axially stretched to different amounts of deformations, from 0% to 300%. DSC and WAXS results show that microconfinement occurs during orientation, which causes a significant reduction in oxygen permeability of multilayer TPU films, when stretched at 75%, by comparison to the mono and bi‐layer TPU. The dependence of gas barrier properties on temperature and deformation was also investigated, and a 100% improvement in elongation at break was found when compared to films of the rigid TPU. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. <bold>2015</bold>, <italic>132</italic>, 41849.</p> </abstract>