Effects of Palmitic Acid@SiO2 on the Synthesis of Microcellular Polyurethane foam

Polyurethane microcellular foams with the high cell density and small cell size are a new class of polymers. These foams provide many excellent thermal and mechanical properties such as higher impact strength, increased fatigue life, higher thoughness and enhanced thermal stability compared with ordinary foams. Microcellular PU foams are used in many applications such as automobiles, electronics, sporting goods, footwears, coatings and foam industries [1]. The use of functional materials such as phase change materials (PCMs) can greatly improve the energy storage properties of the foams.PCMs are important materials in subject of thermal energy storage which have high latent heat values and can absorb or release a large amount of energy while thetemperature of the materials are kept constant during a phase change process. There are three type of PCM: organic (paraffin and fatty acids), inorganic (salts, metals and etc) and eutectic PCM. The combination of PU foams and PCMs was developed the thermal insulation and thermal energy storage. PCM can be incorporated into PU foams by encapsulation. Nanoencapsulation PCM consists of a PCM as core and a polymer or inorganic as shell. In this study, we aimed to incorporate different percentage of Nanoencapsulated PA@SiO2, which contain palmitic acid (PA) as the core and SiO2 as the shell, into the microcellular PU foam. Structure and surface morphology were characterized using IR and SEM. DSC and TGA were used to investigate thermal properties, stability and conductivity [2].