Microstructure and properties of cerium oxide/polyurethane elastomer composites
An Xie, Shen-Wei Mao, Tian-Jiang Chen, Hui Yang, Ming Zhang
Abstract
Abstract In general, inorganic filler/polyurethane elastomer (PUE) composites possess favorable properties, such as modulus, chemical resistance, and heat stability, are promising for broadening the application area of polyurethanes (PU). For the experiments, a series of cerium oxide (CeO 2 )/PUE composites were prepared with different sizes and appearance of CeO 2 , and different mixing methods as well. CeO 2 particles with different sizes were added into PUs during the formation of urethane linkage and the chain‐extend process, respectively. The morphology along with mechanical properties, thermal properties of the composites were studied. The results suggest that the size of CeO 2 and mixing methods influence the microstructure of PUs which has profound effect on properties of these composites. The composites tend to form more quantity of hard domains (HDs) with small size when CeO 2 particles were added before the formation of urethane linkage, whereas CeO 2 particles increase the size of HDs when added with chain extender into PU prepolymer.