Development of thermoplastic polyether ester elastomer microcellular foam with high resilience: Effect of chain extension on foaming behavior and mechanical properties

The lightweight development of thermoplastic polyether ester elastomer (TPEE) has been limited by its low‐melt strength. In this work, the epoxy chain extender ADR was employed to improve TPEE's melt strength in order to enhance its foamability by supercritical N2 (sc‐N2). The results showed th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of applied polymer science 2023-06, Vol.140 (22), p.n/a
Main Authors: Yu, Leilei, Yu, Zhen, Yang, Lijuan, Wen, Shibao, Zhang, Zhen Xiu
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Chains
Dynamic mechanical properties
Elastomers
Foaming
industrial applications
Materials science
Mechanical properties
Microcellular foams
polymer composites
Polymers
Resilience
Sporting goods
supercritical nitrogen
thermoplastic polyether ester elastomer foam
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Summary:The lightweight development of thermoplastic polyether ester elastomer (TPEE) has been limited by its low‐melt strength. In this work, the epoxy chain extender ADR was employed to improve TPEE's melt strength in order to enhance its foamability by supercritical N2 (sc‐N2). The results showed that the melt strength of TPEE increased gradually with the increase of ADR content, which led to the uniformity of the foam cell structure and the improvement of its mechanical properties, that is, a high resilience of 82%. However, when ADR content exceeded 1.6 phr, the viscosity was too high to induce foaming. Remarkably, the maximum stress retention of TPEE foam with 1.6 phr ADR remained at 90% after 50 cycles of compression, while the strain recovery rate was higher than 85%. The prepared TPEE foam has excellent resilience and dynamic mechanical properties, which broadens its application in fields of midsole, sports equipment and transportation.
ISSN:0021-8995
1097-4628
DOI:10.1002/app.53912