Transparent fluorinate acrylic polyurethane with hydrophobicity obtained by crosslinking of hydroxyl-containing fluoroacrylate copolymer with HDI trimer

Abstract Hydroxyl-containing fluoroacrylate copolymers with different fluorine and hydroxyl concentrations were synthesized via free-radical solution polymerization. Transparent fluorinated polyurethane (FPU) films were prepared by curing the copolymers with HDI (hexamethylene diisocyanate) trimer. The Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) results revealed introduction of fluorine both into the copolymer and polyurethane. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analyses indicated that a gradient concentration of fluorine existed in the depth profile of the fluorinated polyurethane films. The highest contact angle (CA) was obtained for the FPU film with fluoroacrylate monomer concentration of 22 wt.% because of fluorine present on the film surface. The surface topographies detected by SEM and AFM indicated that surface roughness contributed little to the film hydrophobicity. By increasing the fluoroacrylate monomer concentration, the decreasing of crosslinking degree of hard segment resulted in lowering the first degradation temperature, while more C-F groups in soft segment led to higher second degradation temperature. UV-Vis spectrophotometer measurements indicated that the FPU film with the fluoroacrylate monomer concentration of 16 wt.% still had a high transmittance of more than 90 % in the whole visible wavelength range.