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Abstract
Water-based polyurethane (PU) was developed to reduce the usage of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the synthesis of conventional solvent-based PU, and exhibits advantages of superior material properties (e.g. flexibility, stretchability, elasticity, mechanical strength), processability (e.g. 3D printing, inkjet printing, screen printing, spray coating, molding) and sustainability (e.g. low VOCs, degradable). Water-based PU contains microphase separated structure with hard and soft segment. Physical blending of polyelectrolyte into water-based PU could affect its microphase separation, enabling tunable mechanical properties and microstructure of obtained composites. For example, blending polyethylenimine (cationic polyelectrolyte) with anionic water-based PU increase the toughness and self-healing ability; blending poly methacrylic acid sodium salt (anionic polyelectrolyte) with anionic water-based PU lead to the tunable transparency.
Due to the existence of a variety of functional groups such as urethane, aliphatic or aromatic hydrocarbons, esters, ethers, amides and urea, water-based PU can be physically or chemically incorporated with functional materials to form PU colloidal composites towards self-healing soft electronics, anti-counterfeiting films, functional adhesives, etc.
Biographical Sketch
Dr. Pengxiang Si is currently an associate professor in Jiangnan University in China. He obtained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Material Science and Engineering from East China University of Science and Technology in 2013 and 2016, respectively; and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo in 2020 under the supervision of Prof. Boxin Zhao. He has 15 peer-refereed publications (9 of them are first authorship) on the journals including Journal of Materials Chemistry A, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, etc. His research interests focus on stimuli-responsive water-based polyurethane film, coatings and adhesives.