Structure and deformation recovery of the thermoplastic polyurethane spherulite |
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| Authors: | Yu Yanagihara Akiko Suenaga Hikari Kondo Hiromu Saito |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Organic and Polymer Materials Chemistry, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Koganei, Tokyo, Japan;2. Polyurethane Research Laboratory, Tosoh Corporation, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan |
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| Abstract: | We investigated the structure and deformation behavior of the thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) spherulite by optical microscopy, tensile testing, Hv light scattering, and small angle X‐ray scattering. The TPU spherulite structure obtained by melt crystallization was coarse consisting of bundle‐like structure containing hard segment (HS) lamellar domain in which the HS domains were stacked and the HS chain direction was perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the HS domain. By stretching, the spherulite was deformed to ellipsoidal one and the stacked HS lamellar domains were tilted in the stretching direction. The deformed spherulite and the tilted HS domain in the spherulite were recovered to the unstretched state by retraction. The recovery of the structure is ascribed to the characteristic spherulite structure consisting of rubbery soft segment matrix physically cross‐linked with the stacked HS domain. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2017 , 55, 1585–1594 |
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| Keywords: | deformation– recoverability fringed micelle‐like crystal polyurethanes SAXS spherulites |
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