Despite
intensive research efforts over the past 3 decades, the
structural analysis of sulfur-vulcanized natural rubber (NR) remains
challenging owing to the complexity and low population of its sulfur
moieties. Herein, solid vulcanized NR samples and NR samples reacted
with sulfur and other reactants in an organic solvent were analyzed
by solid-state NMR with fast magic-angle spinning and solution NMR,
respectively. The present high-field two-dimensional NMR analysis
revealed six novel sulfur moieties in these samples, including cyclic
sulfides, cyclic di/polysulfides, and crosslinked structures with
a vinylidene group. While previous studies reported a variety of sulfur-crosslinked
structures in NR, our analysis identified only two dominant types
of crosslinked structures that matched those reported previously.
Our NMR assignments for the crosslinked structures were inconsistent
to a large extent with those presented in the previous studies; thus,
in the current work, the crosslinked structures were reassigned using
the new data. Based on quantitative NMR analysis, this study also
provides the first tangible evidence that cyclic rather than crosslinked
sulfides can be the dominant sulfur moieties in vulcanized NR. These
results may drastically alter the previously established structural
landscape of sulfur-vulcanized NR.
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