Hydrolysis of poly(ester urethane): In-depth mechanistic pathways through FTIR 2D-COS spectroscopy

The hydrolysis of thermoplastic poly(ester urethane) (PEU) is convoluted by its block copolymer phase structure and competing hydrolytic sensitivities of multiple functional groups. The exact pathways for water ingress, water interaction with the material and ultimately the kinetics and order of functional group hydrolysis remain to be refined. Additional diagnostics are needed to enable deeper insight and deconvolution of material changes. In combination with GPC results, a promising analytical technique – two-dimensional correlation spectroscopy (2D-COS) – has been reviewed and applied to analyze FTIR spectra of hydrolyzed PEUs aged under various conditions, such as exposure time, temperature, and relative humidity. 2D-COS allows the complex role of water with distinct intermediate steps to be established, plus it emphasizes the initial stages of PEU hydrolysis at more susceptible functional groups. As a complication for the raw material, ATR IR detected some talc on the surface of commercial PEU beads and pressed sheets thereof, which can interfere with water ingress and thereby retards PEU hydrolysis, particularly in its natural form or moderate aging at lower temperatures (e.g., below the melting point of PEU). As aging temperature increases above the melting temperature, even traces of water trapped inside the PEU are sufficient to initiate the hydrolysis, which then progresses strongly with increasing temperatures. Feedback from 2D-COS analysis confirms that PEU hydrolysis starts at esters in the soft-segments before those in the urethane linkage become susceptible. Only when the molecular weight of PEU is below a critical molar mass (M_c) will the hydrolysis occur in parallel in the hard-segments since protective morphological phase structures are then absent. The current observations demonstrate unexpected behavior that may result from 'unknown' additives in polymer degradation, the temporal and group-specific hydrolysis of PEU as a function of locally available water molecules, the order of reactivity of susceptible functional groups, and the importance of changes in molecular weight coupled with the phase structure of the polymer.