Preparation of thermoplastic polyurethane blend foams with controlled hydrophobicity via vapor induced phase separation

Abstract

Oil–water separation has attained great attention due to recent concern in environmental safety. Porous material from tailored engineering is the best candidate to selectively adsorb oil from water. Among the various porous materials, polymer based adsorbent has several advantages over others, in terms of controllable porosity and functionality. Here, we propose thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) based blend foam through vapor induced phase separation method as a potential candidate for oil–water separation. In order to adjust hydrophobicity and compatibility of TPU blend, PDMS‐based TPU (Si‐TPU) is designed and synthesized to be blended with commercialized TPU. Si‐TPU with tailored weight ratio (PDMS/PTHF = 4/6) in synthetic level make it possible to achieve both of demanded hydrophobicity (the water contact angle increased from 85.19 ± 1.83° to 121.15 ± 3.79° after adding Si‐TPU) and controlling compatibility with CTPU during VIPS foaming. Thus, these well‐designed Si‐TPU can be utilized in various fields such as improving compatibility of polymer blend, adsorption efficiency of oil, and smart filtration, and so forth.