You may already know that there is aromatic polyurea and aliphatic polyurea, but what is the difference? Which one should I choose during the application? This article will give you some advice.

What is aromatic polyurea?

Aromatic polyurea is the earliest formulation system has been researched and commercial used, compare with aliphatic polyurea and polyaspartic polyurea.

Polyurea elastomer is a polymer, which formed by the reaction with isocyanate（part A） and resin(part B). The part A of aromatic polyurea usually use toluene diisocyanate (TDI), diphenylmethane diisocyanate (MDI), and naphthalene diisocyanate (NDI), while the part B of aromatic polyurea often use polyether amine and amine chain extender.

What is aliphatic polyurea?

The part A of aliphatic polyurea is aliphatic isocyanate, such as TMXDI and IPDI, and part B of aliphatic polyurea usually use polyether amine and aliphatic amine chain extender.

There is no ring structure in aliphatic polyurea, so that it is color stable when exposure to the UV.

What is the difference between aromatic and aliphatic polyurea?

Both aromatic polyurea and aliphatic polyurea has good physical properties, such as tensile strength, elongation at break, impact resistance, abrasion resistance, chemical resistance, durability…etc., but what is the main difference between aromatic and aliphatic?

Then main difference between aromatic polyurea and aliphatic polyurea is that the chemical structure contains a ring in aromatic polyurea, which will cause yellowing after exposure to the UV.

So that the aromatic polyurea is not color stable, while aliphatic polyurea will not change color after exposure to the UV.

The above picture is four different formulations, the left three samples are aromatic polyurea.

While the right one is aliphatic, it’s the same color before exposure, after about 30 days outdoor exposure.

It can be clearly seen that the degree of discoloration of different formulations is not the same.

In this regard, we will conduct long-term and in-depth research to provide high-quality solutions for customers with higher durability requirements.

The advantages and disadvantages of aromatic polyurea and aliphatic polyurea is as follows.

Aromatic or Aliphatic, which one should I choose?

It depends on which property do you think is the most important.

Because that the price of aliphatic raw material is high, so that the price of aliphatic polyurea is expensive, May 3 times than aromatic polyurea.

If you think color stable is very important, you can choose aliphatic polyurea, or aromatic polyurea with aliphatic topcoat.

If you are ok with color change, and just use polyurea for waterproofing, the only thing you care about is the physical property and durability, then aromatic polyurea is more suitable for you.

Conclusion

The main difference between aromatic polyurea and aliphatic polyurea is that aliphatic polyurea is color stable, while it’s more expensive, so that we can choose the most suitable one for our application.