PolyU2

Because of their high recovery to mechanical deformation, polyurethane elastomers are used for a large number of applications, going from automotive sectors to building. However, there is a clear economical need to further improve these materials towards three additional properties: adhesion, self-healing, and recyclability. Adhesion is of first importance to tightly link polyurethane elastomers to other substrates; self-healing is a needed advanced property of materials that can suffer of severe cracking; and recyclability is a major concern with important economic and environmental consequences. The purpose of the PolyU2 project is to integrate these three functional properties in a single family of smart polyurethane elastomers. These polymers will incorporate two types of reversible chemical bonds (supramolecular and reversible covalent) to finely control the double-dynamics of their chemical networks. This double dynamic is one of the main originality of this project and it will lead to a combination of fast and slow time scales of chemical exchange / recombination processes for enhancing performances in both adhesion and self-healing for various levels of cracking. In addition, this controllable double dynamic will lead to fully reversible polymer networks which can behave as thermoset in certain environmental conditions while being soluble and recyclable in others. The final objective of the project will consist in developing a material at the kilogram scale for real-life applications in the domain of construction. The fundamental aspects of the project (systematic studies in chemistry and advanced mechanical characterization) will be performed at the Institut Charles Sadron of Strasbourg, a renowned international academic center for polymer science and self-assembled systems. The technology will be then improved on the most promising materials (scale up to the industrial scale and tests of performance in real conditions) by the company SOPREMA, one of the international leaders for building materials (waterproofing, insulation …) with a large know how in polyurethane products (coatings, foam, thermoplastic).