ABSTRACT
Polyurethane (PU) represents an important class of thermoplastic and thermoset polymers whose mechanical, thermal, and chemical properties can be tailored with various polyols and isocyanates. Usually, both isocyanates and polyols are substances obtained
from petroleum, but, in recent years, natural sources such as polysaccharides, proteins, amino acids, lipids, fatty acids, and derivatives have attracted signiicant attention as raw materials for preparation of PUs. Thus, renewable resources could provide an interesting sustainable platform for substitution of petroleumbased polymers through the design of bio-based polymers that can compete or even surpass the existing materials on a costperformance basis with high eco-friendly values [1]. PUs have a wide variety of properties and applications, which obey the stepgrowth polymerization of diisocyanates with diols, producing two separate segmented phases, i.e., hard and soft segments. The hard segments are derived from the diisocyanates and their chain extenders, while the soft segments consist of the polyol. It is possible to obtain very brittle and hard materials or soft, tacky, and viscous materials, depending on the properties and raw materials used in their synthesis [2].
