Polyurea: Evolution, synthesis, performance, modification, and future directions

Abstract

Polyurea, a versatile polymer, demonstrates significant potential in coating materials and other applications. Consequently, understanding polyurea systems, elucidating key mechanisms, and exploring research directions are critical. This paper presents the first comprehensive review of polyurea, focusing on mechanism analysis. It systematically examines the development history of polyurea, introduces its synthesis and preparation processes, expounds on its main performance characteristics and underlying causes, provides detailed analyses of modification methods and mechanisms, and explores its future applications and research directions. The study indicates that polyurea is a promising material developed relatively early, with diverse synthesis methods. Its performance advantages stem from block connections, microphase separation, and hydrogen bonding, with enhancement and functionalization achieved through modification. Polyurea exhibits excellent performance, including corrosion resistance, wear resistance, high elasticity, impact resistance, and self-healing, showing broad application prospects such as anti-corrosion and moisture-proofing, shock absorption and cushioning, anti-impact and explosion-proofing, sealing and bonding, lightweighting, and multifunctionality.