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1. Use of fly ash as eco-friendly filler in synthetic rubber for tire applications

   Xianjie Ren, Erol Sancaktar ( September 2018 , Journal of cleaner production)

   A byproduct of the power generation industries, fly ash can be used as a potential filler in many commercial products including rubber-based products. Reusing the fly ash in this manner is an efficient way to help prevent air pollution which occurs if such particles are released freely to the atmosphere. The reinforcement efficiency of fly ash for partial replacement of carbon black and silica fillers in styrenebutadiene rubber compounds was investigated in this work. The total content of fillers was held constant at 50 phr (weight ratio of filler to rubber was 0.5) when not using silica fillers at all, and 54 phr when using 4 phr carbon black only with silica fillers, while the content of fly ash increased from 0 to 10 phr. In the evaluation of the rubber compounds, the focus was the mechanical properties and adhesion of steel reinforcement cords to the styrene-butadiene rubber compounds. Adhesion between the compounds and steel wire reinforcement was measured for assessing efficacy of adding fly ash to the rubber compounds in tire applications. Ball mill treatment was used to reduce the size of the fly ash particles while also modifying their surface topography. The comparisons of untreated and ball millmore »treated fly ash filled rubber compounds and rubber compounds containing different fillers were accomplished subsequently. The results revealed that the partial addition of up to 10 phr fly ash to rubber compounds resulted in increases in elongation at break, adhesion to reinforcement steel cord, wet-grip, as well as lower rolling resistance« less
2. Exploiting arene-perfluoroarene interactions for dispersion of carbon black in rubber compounds

   Prasad Raut, Nicole Swanson ( November 2018 , Polymer)

   Coupling agents are intended to promote filler dispersion by providing a bridge between the filler and the rubber phase. This study investigated the ability of a novel physical coupling agent, poly(butadienegraft-pentafluorostyrene) in a mixture with polypentafluorostyrene, to improve rubber-filler interactions and suppress filler-filler networking in carbon-black-reinforced styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR), and thereby decrease hysteresis. The electron-rich aromatic rings of carbon black are involved in areneperfluoroarene interactions with the electron-poor pentafluorostyrene aromatic rings of the coupling agent. The SBR chains in the rubber compound have an affinity for the polybutadiene backbone of the coupling agent. The interactions between carbon black and the coupling agent were analyzed using Raman spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, zeta potential measurements, surface area measurements, and scanning electron microscopy. Filler flocculation analysis showed that the coupling agent improves the dispersion and lowers the energy of dissipation. The hysteresis loss, quantified in terms of loss tangent values at 60
   C, was reduced by up to 12% due to the coupling agent's promotion of better filler-rubber interactions. The influence of the PPFS graft length was also studied.
3. A novel strategy to functionalize styrene butadiene rubber toward enhanced interfacial interaction with silica

   https://doi.org/10.1002/app.54476  

   Xu, Yihui ; Liu, Yudong ; Qin, Xuan ; Liu, Jun ; Zhang, Liqun ( July 2023 , Journal of Applied Polymer Science)

   Incorporation of nanofillers (such as silica) into elastomer matrix is the most common strategy to prepare high‐performance rubber products. However, the poor dispersion of nanofillers in non‐affinity rubber materials and the weak interfacial interaction significantly limit the processing and mechanical properties. To reduce the polarity difference and enhance the interfacial interaction between silica and styrene butadiene rubber (SBR), we prepared a hydroxyethyl acrylate‐grafted SBR (SBR‐g‐HEA) through the redox initiator system, and subsequently fabricated SBR‐g‐HEA/silica nanocomposites by simple mechanical blending. The effects of reaction conditions on the grafting rate were studied in detail. ATR‐FTIR and¹H‐NMR collectively confirmed the successful grafting of HEA groups on SBR molecular chains, and the grafting fraction could be regulated from 0% to 2.5%. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) and rubber processing analyzer (RPA) showed that the incorporation of HEA could significantly improve the dispersion of silica nanoparticles in SBR matrix. Notably, the resulting SBR‐g‐HEA exhibited significantly enhanced attributes when compared to their unmodified counterparts, including superior mechanical properties, improved wear resistance, and reduced heat generation. The strategy proposed here provided insights toward the fabrication of non‐affinity rubber/filler nanocomposites for high‐performance rubber products and green tire.
4. Reinforcement of Natural Rubber Latex Using Jute Carboxycellulose Nanofibers Extracted Using Nitro-Oxidation Method

   https://doi.org/10.3390/nano10040706  

   Sharma, Sunil K. ; Sharma, Priyanka R. ; Lin, Simon ; Chen, Hui ; Johnson, Ken ; Wang, Ruifu ; Borges, William ; Zhan, Chengbo ; Hsiao, Benjamin S. ( April 2020 , Nanomaterials)

   Synthetic rubber produced from nonrenewable fossil fuel requires high energy costs and is dependent on the presumed unstable petroleum price. Natural rubber latex (NRL) is one of the major alternative sustainable rubber sources since it is derived from the plant ‘Hevea brasiliensis’. Our study focuses on integrating sustainably processed carboxycellulose nanofibers from untreated jute biomass into NRL to enhance the mechanical strength of the material for various applications. The carboxycellulose nanofibers (NOCNF) having carboxyl content of 0.94 mmol/g was prepared and integrated into its nonionic form (–COONa) for its higher dispersion in water to increase the interfacial interaction between NRL and NOCNF. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) analyses of NOCNF showed the average dimensions of nanofibers were length (L) = 524 ± 203 nm, diameter (D) 7 ± 2 nm and thickness 2.9 nm. Furthermore, fourier transform infra-red spectrometry (FTIR) analysis of NOCNF depicted the presence of carboxyl group. However, the dynamic light scattering (DLS) measurement of NRL demonstrated an effective diameter in the range of 643 nm with polydispersity of 0.005. Tensile mechanical strengths were tested to observe the enhancement effects at various concentrations of NOCNF in the NRL. Mechanical properties of NRL/NOCNF films weremore »determined by tensile testing, where the results showed an increasing trend of enhancement. With the increasing NOCNF concentration, the film modulus was found to increase quite substantially, but the elongation-to-break ratio decreased drastically. The presence of NOCNF changed the NRL film from elastic to brittle. However, at the NOCNF overlap concentration (0.2 wt. %), the film modulus seemed to be the highest.« less
5. Effect of Filler–Polymer Interface on Elastic Properties of Polymer Nanocomposites: A Molecular Dynamics Study

   Chi Ma, 1 Tuo ( September 2017 , Tire science & technology)

   A coarse-grained model has been built to study the effect of the interfacial interaction between spherical filler particles and polymer on the mechanical properties of polymer nanocomposites. The polymer is modeled as bead-spring chains, and nano-fillers grafted with coupling agent are embedded into the polymer matrix. The potential parameters for polymer and filler are optimized to maximally match styrene-butadiene rubber reinforced with silica particles. The results indicated that, to play a noticeable role in mechanical reinforcement, a critical value exists for the grafting density of the filler–polymer coupling agent. After reaching the critical value, the increase of grafting density can substantially enhance mechanical properties. It is also observed that the increase of grafting density does not necessarily increase the amount of independent polymer chains connected to fillers. Instead, a significant amount of increased grafting sites serve to further strengthen already connected polymer and filler, indicating that mechanical reinforcement can occur through the locally strengthened confinement at the filler–polymer interface. These understandings based on microstructure visualization shed light on the development of new filler polymer interfaces with better mechanical properties.