Synthesis and Properties of Fully Biobased Thermoplastic Elastomers from Priamine

Priamine derived from vegetable oil has gradually gained attention due to its flexibility. In this study, priamine 1075 was applied to react with urea to prepare thermoplastic polyurea (PUr) and with biuret to polybiuret (PBU) elastomers via solvent-free and catalyst-free melting polycondensation. The obtained PUr and PBUs possess excellent chain flexibility. The strength of PBU00 achieves 8 MPa which is about twice that of PUr. This indicates that the introduction of biuret function in the backbone is able to enhance the mechanical properties. To further improve the strength of the elastomer, 1,10-decanediamine (DDA) was utilized to enlarge the size of the hard segment and the strength of the obtained polymer (PBU20) increases further to 21 MPa. Interestingly, these elastomers exhibit good energy dissipation efficiency (∼80%) and excellent hydrophobicity (water contact angle ∼ 110°), which makes them suitable to be applied in the fields of energy absorption and hydrophobic coatings.