Modification of Water-borne Polyurethane Using Benzophenone Crosslinker

Production of eco-friendly and biologically harmless materials is strongly required in all industries. In particular, reducing volatile organic compounds in coating processes is extremely important to secure worker’s safety. During recent two decades, extensive research works on water-borne polyurethane dispersion (PUD) have been continuously developed as an alternative to solvent-borne polyurethane. However, PUD was shown inferior mechanical properties to the organic solvent-borne polyurethane due to a limit to the molecular weight increase, which resulted in the limit of applications. To overcome this drawback, several approaches have been examined such as polymer blends and thermal/radiation induced crosslinking. Among these methods, the radiation curing system was suitable for industrialization because of the high crosslinking density and fast curing speed. In this study, we overcame the drawback for PUD via introducing benzophenone radiation curable units to PUD. We synthesized PUD films which possessed good dispersion in water for 30 days, increased Tg and Td more than 5 °C after UV curing film as well as improved young’s modulus more than double.