Properties of polyurethane coatings containing additives of phenolic compounds

The properties of polyurethane containing five kinds of model phenolic additives were investigated. The IR spectra of polyurethane containing phenolic additives indicated that the phenolic additives reacted with isocyanate groups in a polyisocyanate compound. For an index of anticorrosion, the tensile adhesion strength was measured for polyurethane coatings with phenolic additives on steel plates treated with the salt-water spraying test for 3000 h. It was found that there was a relationship between the tensile adhesion strength of polyurethane and the density. We considered the reason to be that the increase in density (i.e., a reduction in free volume) should provide a route to reduce salt-water access to an adhesive bond. The increase in density was explained by the term antiplasticizers, which means that the phenolic additives reduce the free volume that is available for molecular motion in the stiff chain of polyurethane. In the polyurethanes with every phenolic additive, the elongation was increased, the moduli were decreased, the storage modulus was decreased, and the coefficient of thermal expansion was increased. These phenomena are the characteristics of plasticizers. Thus, the phenolic additives have both the character of antiplasticizers and plasticizers, but the polyurethane with phenolic additives had more characteristics of plasticizers than those of antiplasticizers. (c) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.