Comparative study between core–shell and interpenetrating network structure polyurethane/polyacrylate composite emulsions

Anionic aqueous polyurethane dispersion was prepared by using carboxyl acid group to make the polyurethane dispersible, and then nanograde core–shell and crosslinked IPN structure polyurethane/polyacrylate composite latex (PUA) were synthesized by soap-free emulsion polymerization method with polyurethane dispersion as seed. FTIR, DSC, dynamic light scattering, TEM, ESCA, TGA, electronic tensile machine were employed to investigate the structures and properties of the composite latex and their polymers. Meanwhile the core–shell composite PUA emulsion and the crosslinked IPN composite PUA emulsion were compared. The results showed that the particle morphology of PUA composite emulsion is inverted core–shell structure with polyacrylate as the core and with polyurethane as the shell. The morphology of the crosslinked PUA emulsion was multi-core structure. The surface in core–shell PUA contains rich PU phase. The phase structure of the crosslinked PUA is more uniform. Three transition temperatures are observed for the core–shell composite PUA, two transitions are observed for the film from the crosslinked PUA. The TGA curves of core–shell PUA and crosslinked PUA exhibit two stages, the first stage corresponds to the thermal decomposition of hard segments in seed polyurethane; the second stage corresponds to the decomposition of soft segments in PUA and decomposition of polyacrylate. With the increase of glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) amounts in PUA composite emulsions, the tensile strength of the PUA films as well as the average diameter of the PUA composite emulsion particles increase, the elongation at break of the PUA films decreases.