The polyurethane/polyacrylate soap-free emulsion formation: effects of hydrophilic polyurethane

The vinyl group terminated water-borne polyurethanes (WPU) with different DMPA content were prepared. Subsequently the core-shell polyurethane/polyacrylate (PUA) composite emulsions were synthesized by soap-free emulsion copolymerization. The WPU as sole surfactant was used in copolymerization, and the lowest surface tension could be achieved to 38.8?mN m^?1. Furthermore, the final conversion of acrylic monomer was reached to 98% in the case of WPU reactive seed. The FTIR-ATR indirectly confirmed the core-shell structure of PUA, simultaneously combined with DSC results found that the compatibility of WPU and PA was enhanced by growing grafting efficiency. The TEM results further indicated that the amount of DMPA in WPU had a great significant role in polymerization and final morphology structure. The PUA composite particles changed from scattered structure, core-shell structure to multi-core structure with increasing DMPA content. Correspondingly, the reinforcing and toughening effects were also found in PUA films with the increase content of DMPA by tensile testing.