Synthesis, Characterization and Non-Isothermal Crystallization Kinetics of a New Family of Poly (Ether-Block-Amide)s Based on Nylon 10T/10I.

A series of novel thermoplastic elastomers based on (poly(decamethylene terephthalamide/decamethylene isophthalamide), PA10T/10I) and poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) were synthesized via a facile one-pot, efficient and pollution-free method. The thermal analysis demonstrates that the melting points of the resultant elastomers were in the range of 217.1-233.9 °C, and their initial decomposition temperatures were in the range of 385.3-387.5 °C. That is higher than most commercial polyamide-based thermoplastic elastomers. The tensile strength of the resultant elastomers ranges from 21.9 to 41.1 MPa. According to the high-temperature bending test results, the resultant samples still maintain considerably better mechanical properties than commercial products such as Pebax 5533 (Arkema, Paris, France), and these novel thermoplastic elastomers could potentially be applied in high-temperature scenes. The non-isothermal crystallization kinetics of the resultant elastomers and PA10T/10I was investigated by means of Jeziorny and Mo's methods. Both of them could successfully describe the crystallization behavior of the resultant elastomers. Additionally, the activation energy of non-isothermal crystallization was calculated by the Kissinger method and the Friedman equation. The results indicate that the crystallization rates follow the order of TPAE-2000 > TPAE-1500 > PA10T/10I > TPAE-1000. From the crystallization analysis, the crystallization kinetics and activation energies are deeply affected by the molecular weight of hard segment.