Thermoplastic elastomers are a special class of polymers that combine ease of thermoplastics processing with excellent mechanical benefits of vulcanized rubbers. Soft and rubber domains of TPE are responsible for its deformation when it is under stress while the hard segments remain crystalline and do not undergo deformation. Above its melting temperature, TPE starts to flow and can be treated by typical thermoplastic processing methods.
This kind of materials can be synthesized directly in a reactor as block copolymers which consist of elastic and non-elastic blocks, such as styrene-butadiene-styrene (SBS), styrene-ethylene-butylene-styrene (SEBS), styrene-isoprene-styrene (SIS), thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), thermoplastic co-polyester (TPC, also known as TPE-E) or can be obtained via compounding of a rubbery polymer such as ethylene-propylene-diene monomer (EPDM), nitrile rubber (NBR), SBS, SEBS, with a thermoplastic such as polypropylene, polyethylene and polyvinylchloride.
