Benzimidazole as an antifungal agent and poly(acrylic acid) as a hydrophilic group were grafted together onto polyurethane (PU) to synthesis the antifungal PU. Benzimidazole was chosen as a key antifungal agent because of its proven fungal growth control against a wide spectrum of fungi. The hydrophilicity of antifungal PU was notably escalated after the grafting of poly(acrylic acid) based on the water contact angle results, but the melting and glass transition of soft segment in PU did not notably change by the grafting of benzimidazole and poly(acrylic acid). The synthesized antifungal PUs exhibited a sharp increase in the breaking tensile stress and shape recovery due to the slight chemical cross‐linking between PUs. The benzimidazole‐grafted PUs containing the poly(acrylic acid) demonstrated a clear suppression in the growth of a group of fungi. Therefore, the antifungal PUs with enhanced tensile strength and shape recovery capability were successfully synthesized using the combined grafting of benzimidazole and poly(acrylic acid) onto PU.
Polystyrene has been attached to polyurethane (PU) by way of graft-polymerization steps to ameliorate the thermal stability and tensile stress of PU. For example, the polystyrene-grafted PU copolymer was studied to develop a solvent separation membrane 1 and a water-borne polystyrene-grafted PU copolymer was prepared to improve the mechanical properties of PU. 2 PU has already been modified via the grafting of functional group using a diisocyanate reagent to improve water compatibility, 3 electric conductivity, 4 antifungal activity, 5 etc. In this investigation, we have grafted polystyrene onto PU using the graftpolymerization method starting from 3-isopropenyl-α,α-dimethylbenzyl isocyanate linked to PU. However, the diisocyanate reagent used for grafting functional groups onto PU was avoided in this investigation to discard the side reactions arising from the diisocyanate reagent. The impact of the grafted polystyrene on the thermal phase transitions of soft segment, tensile tenacity, and shape recovery ability will be discussed.Previously, the radical graft-polymerization of polystyrene to the hard segment of PU initiated from the grafted 2-hydroxyethylacrylate (HEA) that was attached to PU using a bis(4-isocyanatophenyl)methane (MDI) as a grafting agent. 6 However, 3-isopropenyl-α,α-dimethylbenzyl isocyanate (IDBI) replaced both HEA and MDI and simplified the graft-polymerization steps in this investigation. The grafted polystyrene is expected to impact the thermal and mechanical properties of PU because the rigid polystyrene could lessen the hard segment interactions. The structure of basic PU (L) and the graft-polymerization steps of styrene monomers are displayed in Figure 1(a) and 1(b), respectively. The functionalization of PU using the reactive diisocyanate compound as a grafting agent was frequently reported in the literature due to the fast and reliable reaction steps. 7 The grafted functional groups usually do not diminish the tensile intensity and shape recovery ability of PU because the hard segment was used as the grafting site and the soft segment was not restricted in its movement. The styrene monomer content in the main PS series in Table 1 increases little by little to confirm the effect of polystyrene on the abovementioned properties, whereas the polystyrene is not secured to PU in the control CPS series because the IDBI is not included in the grafting step.The cross-link densities are compared in Figure 2 (a) because a small portion of grafted polystyrenes could be used for the connection in PS series, as presented in Figure 1 (c). The cross-link density was evaluated by way of the inverse relation between the PU swelling in toluene and the degree of cross-linking as explained in our previous reports. 4-6 The cross-link density inclined a little after the grafting of polystyrene in PS series, but that of CPS series was less than that of PS series because the polystyrene was not grafted. However, the difference in the cross-link density values between PS and CPS series was not significant whe...
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