Synthesis, Characterization and Non-Isothermal Crystallization Kinetics of a New Family of Poly (Ether-Block-Amide)s Based on Nylon 10T/10I

A series of novel thermoplastic elastomers based on (poly(decamethylene terephthalamide/decamethylene isophthalamide), PA10T/10I) and poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) were synthesized via a facile one-pot, efficient and pollution-free method. The thermal analysis demonstrates that the melting points of the resultant elastomers were in the range of 217.1–233.9 °C, and their initial decomposition temperatures were in the range of 385.3–387.5 °C. That is higher than most commercial polyamide-based thermoplastic elastomers. The tensile strength of the resultant elastomers ranges from 21.9 to 41.1 MPa. According to the high-temperature bending test results, the resultant samples still maintain considerably better mechanical properties than commercial products such as Pebax(®) 5533 (Arkema, Paris, France), and these novel thermoplastic elastomers could potentially be applied in high-temperature scenes. The non-isothermal crystallization kinetics of the resultant elastomers and PA10T/10I was investigated by means of Jeziorny and Mo’s methods. Both of them could successfully describe the crystallization behavior of the resultant elastomers. Additionally, the activation energy of non-isothermal crystallization was calculated by the Kissinger method and the Friedman equation. The results indicate that the crystallization rates follow the order of TPAE-2000 > TPAE-1500 > PA10T/10I > TPAE-1000. From the crystallization analysis, the crystallization kinetics and activation energies are deeply affected by the molecular weight of hard segment.