Construction of Tensile Strength and Density Prediction Models for Semi-Interpenetrating Polymer Network from Fluoroelastomer and Poly(dimethylsiloxane)

Interpenetrating polymer networks (IPNs) have attracted considerable attention due to the forced miscibility compared with usually incompatible blends. In this article, semi-IPNs composed of linear fluoroelastomer F2314 and cross-linked poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) were synthesized by changing the mass ratio of F2314/PDMS and the molar ratio of [NCO]/[OH], and the properties of the prepared samples were studied. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) confirmed the F2314/PDMS semi-IPNs with microphase separation. Considering the unique microscopic structure of the semi-IPNs, the prediction models for the tensile strength and density of semi-IPNs were developed by analyzing the experimental data and calculation data from the kinetic Monte Carlo simulation using the BFGS quasi-Newton algorithm to quantify the effect of the extent of interpenetration on the properties. Furthermore, the performance shows that the prediction errors of the tensile strength and density are within 10 and 2%, respectively.