Construction of CO2-based thermoplastic elastomer via combining aliphatic polycarbonate and polyamide: A multiblock copolymer PPC-mb-PA6

A CO 2 -based thermoplastic elastomer, poly(propylene carbonate)-multiblock-polyamide6 (PPC- mb -PA6) copolymer, was constructed through coupling amorphous/soft PPC blocks with crystalline/hard PA6 blocks. The PPC- mb -PA6 copolymers with different block length pairs were designed and synthesized, and then fully characterized by structural, thermal, and mechanical analysis. The proton nuclear magnetic resonance ( 1 H-NMR), diffusion ordered spectroscopy (DOSY), heteronuclear multiple-bond correlation (HMBC) and gel permeation chromatography (GPC) results confirm that the multiblock sequence structure of PPC- mb -PA6. The differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) tests show that all PPC-mb-PA6s possess melting points around 179–206°C. The thermal and mechanical analysis indicates improved service temperatures ( T 5% up to 270°C) and tensile strength ranging from 15.8 to 39.6 MPa with higher PA6 content. The dynamic mechanical analysis demonstrates excellent shape memory effect of PPC- mb -PA6 with thermal stimuli responsiveness derived from the micro phase separation between soft PPC and hard PA6 domains. And the characteristic strain fixity parameter ( R f ) and deformation recovery rate ( R r ) are 98% and 100%, respectively, which are comparable with other excellent shape memory polymers.