Crosslinked waterborne polyurethane with high waterproof performance

A study on the cross-linking of fluorinated acrylate and siloxane waterborne polyurethanes was carried out in order to produce a material with improved waterproof property. Trimethylolpropane-tris-(β-N-aziridinyl) propionate was employed as a simple, fast curing and low cost crosslinking agent. It follows that the acquired polyurethane film had the lowest water absorption and highest water contact angles so far among this series of compounds, and has better mechanical/thermal properties once the fluoride acrylic monomer content reaches 8 wt% and polyether modified polydimethylsiloxane content is 10 wt%. Once the crosslinked structure is acquired, the overall performance of the polyurethane films are enhanced, i.e. the water absorption decreases to 3.48% and n-heptane swelling decreases to 1.02%, the hardness reaches 6H and the tensile strength also rises to 33.2 MPa. Such eco-friendly crosslinked polyurethane films with outstanding waterproof property can find various applications in corrosion protection and optoelectronic devices.