Melting and solidification of thermoplastic polyurethanes as a function of nucleating agents

Abstract The solidification of two thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPU) appears as a two‐stage segregation (large‐scale allocation hard‐phase entities, short‐scale granulation in the allocated entities). Following consolidation may raise fraction. Mechanical stability requires granular morphology. Good nucleating agents (NA) temperature and shorten lifetimes granulation. They can suppress consolidation. Shorter causes lower hard phase fraction, shorter means earlier transition to solid. Annealed materials have much higher contents morphology more uniform domains regular arrangement. Both TPUs segment content but different soft segments (polyether, polyester). Samples are injection‐molded annealed. Melting‐and‐solidification experiments (, , ) monitored by small‐angle (SAXS) wide‐angle X‐ray scattering. Three NAs contain resonating aromatic structures, fourth is talc. do not affect melting polyether TPU, some point polyester TPU considerably. SAXS chord‐distribution analysis reveals that region melt framed peaks. There, mean chord lengths longest width distributions changes fastest.