Controllable Preparation of High-Performance Amine-Terminated Polybutadiene-Based Polyurea: Structure and Properties

Abstract

Polyurea elastomers with excellent mechanical properties are widely used in a variety of applications due to the unique microphase separation structure and high flexibility in formulations. A key point in the development of polyurea elastomers is to explore the structure–property relationship. However, few studies have focused on the effect of soft segment structures because of the limitation that the flexible soft segments are usually commercialized amine-terminated polyether. Herein, a series of polybutadiene-based polyurea elastomers were prepared to systematically investigate the influence of the network structures on the ultimate properties of the polyurea materials. In particular, the amine-terminated liquid polybutadiene rubber with tunable molecular weights and liquid polystyrene–butadiene rubber were synthesized via the degradation method for flexible regulation of the soft segment structure. The results demonstrated that performance optimization could be achieved by manipulating the degree of hydrogen bonding, which was controlled by the network structure. Besides, the polybutadiene-based polyurea elastomers exhibited excellent low-temperature properties, owing to the high cis-1,4 content.