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The impact of conditions mimicking physiological environment on the thermal stability of aliphatic polycarbonate-based polyurethane elastomers

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Abstract

Thermal stabilities of all-aliphatic thermoplastic polyurethane (PU) films, either three-component (made from polycarbonate-based macrodiol, diisocyanate-1,6-hexane and butane-1,4-diol) or four-component (containing in addition oligomeric d,l-lactide-based linker in PU backbone), were studied by using thermogravimetric analysis (TG), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), auto-stepwise TG and TG coupled with FTIR (TG-FTIR). The evaluation of the influence of PU composition and time of the sample exposure to the environment mimicking physiological conditions (phosphate buffer saline at 37 °C) on the thermal characteristics was the main task of the study. The shapes of the mass loss curves of all studied PUs are almost identical, and the differences in thermal stabilities are relatively small. While the three-component PUs are thermally stable up to 280 °C in the minimum, the four-component PU starts to decompose at about 250 °C, due to the presence of the thermal-unstable d,l-lactide component. In all PU materials tested, the thermal stability is only slightly affected by the hydrolytic process. The safe technological processability till 200 °C together with the evolving of relatively safe main volatile compounds makes the polycarbonate-based PUs as suitable candidates for medical, bio-, package and similar applications.

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Notes

  1. PBS—Phosphate-Buffered Saline contains monobasic potassium phosphate, sodium chloride, and dibasic sodium phosphate.

  2. For details, see e.g. Fig. 2 in Ref. [32].

  3. The rest PU samples tested have further T DTG maximum at ca 450 °C.

  4. TG was realized on fully dried samples. The mass loss of T4-1-1-12 was ca 5 mass% compared to T4-1-1-0.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Czech Science Foundation under Project No. 13-06700S. The authors would like to thank L. Machová and R. Poręba for the experimental work connected with PU material preparation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry AS CR (IMC), Heyrovsky Sq. 2, 162 06, Prague 6, Czech Republic

    Milena Špírková, Jana Kredatusová & Jiří Hodan

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  1. Milena Špírková
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  2. Jana Kredatusová
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  3. Jiří Hodan
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Correspondence to Milena Špírková.

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Špírková, M., Kredatusová, J. & Hodan, J. The impact of conditions mimicking physiological environment on the thermal stability of aliphatic polycarbonate-based polyurethane elastomers. J Therm Anal Calorim 128, 1699–1709 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-016-6029-y

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