Design of polypropylene oxide/polybutadiene bi-soft segment urethane/urea polymer for pervaporation membranes

Novel cross-linked urethane/urea polymers with two soft segments, polypropylene oxide and polybutadiene, were prepared by extending polypropylene oxide-based isocyanate-terminated triol prepolymer with polybutadiene diol. Infra-red spectra indicated that with increasing polybutadiene content in the polymers, the hydrogen bonding of urethane/urea groups among hard segments became weaker. This was interpreted as an improvement of freedom of urethane/urea groups and their mixing with polypropylene oxide. The dynamic mechanical thermal analysis indicated that the two soft segments were highly dispersed, and could lead to a molecularly mixed phase. The swelling experiments with ethanol aqueous solutions indicated a preferential sorption of ethanol and a decrease of the swelling degree with increase of polybutadiene content in the polymer films. The preferential permeation of ethanol is confirmed by the pervaporation results. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.