The Polymer Society of Korea

Abstract

Thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs) are block copolymers with network structures formed by physical crosslinkers—crystalline hard domains. Although the network morphology determines the mechanical properties of TPEs, the relation between chain architectures and network structures remains elusive. Here, we investigate the role of chain architectures on the crystallinity, conformations and mechanical properties of TPEs. We prepare linear, ring, and brush topologies with varying number of blocks (N_blk). Note that we fixed the hard composition and the molecular weight. We applied the sinusoidal strain to obtain storage and loss modulus (E’ and E”). We find that E’ is mainly determined by N_blk regardless of the topology. However, E” highly depends on topologies. Linear ones have higher E” compared to rings and brushes. We infer that linear ones have lower crystallinity and higher Rg, which promotes stress dissipations.