Insight into PU/PA hybrid systems: Grafting of polyacrylate onto the polyurethane backbone

 
Polymer hybrids are designed to combine the best of both worlds. Nevertheless, when performing seeded emulsion polymerization for their manufacture different degrees of intimacy may be realized on particulate level ranging from mere physical mixtures, albeit on nano-scale, to graft-copolymers (= true hybrids). In this work, exemplified mainly on polyurethane/polyacrylate hybrids we will focus on advanced analytical methods how to quantify "%grafting", identify structure-property relationships accompanied therewith and, finally, showcase benefits of employing "true" hybrids in some application examples.