Renewable resource modified polyol derived aliphatic hyperbranched polyurethane as a biodegradable and UV‐resistant smart material

Renewable resource tailored tough, elastomeric, biodegradable, smart aliphatic hyperbranched polyurethanes were synthesized using castor oil modified polyol containing fatty amide triol, glycerol, diethanolamine and monoglyceride of sunflower oil via an A_x + B_y (x , y ≥ 2) approach. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of the synthesis of solely aliphatic hyperbranched polyurethanes by employing renewable resources. The synthesized polyurethanes were characterized by Fourier transform infrared, NMR and XRD techniques. The hyperbranched polyurethanes exhibited good mechanical properties, especially elongation at break (668%), toughness (32.16 MJ m^?3) and impact resistance (19.02 kJ m^?1); also high thermal stability (above 300 °C) and good chemical resistance. Also, the hyperbranched polyurethanes were found to show adequate biodegradability and significant UV light resistance. Moreover, they demonstrated excellent multi‐stimuli‐driven shape recovery ability (up to 97%) under direct sunlight (10⁵ lux), thermal energy (50 °C) and microwave irradiation (450 W). The performance of the hyperbranched polyurethanes was compared with renewable resource based and synthetic linear polyurethane to judge the superiority of the hyperbranched architecture. Therefore, these new aliphatic macromolecules hold significant promise as smart materials for advanced applications. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry