Natural rubber (NR) films can reduce silver metal ions forming embedded metal nanoparticles, a process that could be described as green synthesis. The NR films acting as a reactor generate and incorporate silver nanoparticles (AgNPs). Organic acids and amino acids play a crucial role in the formation of AgNPs. The plasmon extinction obtained in the UV-visible spectrum shows the presence of nanoparticles in the film after dipping the NR film into a solution of silver nitrate at 80°C. Electron microscopic analysis confirms the presence of AgNPs in the NR film and characterization by atomic force microscopy shows a change in the roughness of the NR film with AgNPs. In addition, our preliminary results fromin vitrotoxicity studies (MTT and comet assays) of the NR films and NR films with silver nanoparticles (NR/Ag) show that they are not toxic to cell lineage CHO-K1 (cells from the ovary of a Chinese hamster), an important result for potential medical applications.

This article describes a new approach of recycling the leather waste (shavings) using it as filler in natural rubber foams composites. The foams were prepared using different amounts of leather waste (0–60 parts per hundred of rubber) and submitted to morphological (SEM microscopy) and mechanical analyses (cyclic stress–strain compression). The increase of leather shavings on the composite causes an increase of viscosity in the mixture, which reflects in the foaming process. This results in smaller and fairly uniform cells. Furthermore, expanded rubber has the biggest cell size, with more than 70% of cell with 1000 µm, while the composite with the higher concentration of leather has around 80% of total number of cells with 100–400 µm. The mechanical parameters were found to depend on the leather dust concentration. Moreover, the stiffness rises with the increase of leather shavings; consequently, the compression force for expanded rubber was 0.126 MPa as well as the composite with higher concentration of leather was 7.55 MPa. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015, 132, 41636.

Single-phase polycrystalline mixed nickel-zinc ferrites belonging to Ni0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4 were prepared on a nanometric scale (mean crystallite size equal to 14.7 nm) by chemical synthesis named the modified poliol method. Ferrite nanopowder was then incorporated into a natural rubber matrix producing nanocomposites. The samples were investigated by means of infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and magnetic measurements. The obtained results suggest that the base concentration of nickel-zinc ferrite nanoparticles inside the polymer matrix volume greatly influences the magnetic properties of nanocomposites. A small quantity of nanoparticles, less than 10 phr, in the nanocomposite is sufficient to produce a small alteration in the semi-crystallinity of nanocomposites observed by X-ray diffraction analysis and it produces a flexible magnetic composite material with a saturation magnetization, a coercivity field and an initial magnetic permeability equal to 3.08 emu/g, 99.22 Oe and 9.42 x 10(-5) respectively.

a b s t r a c tThis work focused on the production of natural rubber foams by cross-linking the polymer matrix using high energy electron beam at different irradiation doses (from 50 to 150 kGy) and foaming it with a chemical blowing agent. The aim was to study how the irradiation dose influenced the cellular structure morphology of the produced foams. This was accomplished by quantifying the evolution of cellular structure parameters, such as cell size and cell density, with respect to foaming time and irradiation dose. The results showed that the foams irradiated at the lowest dose are more prone to suffer cellular structure degeneration, resulting in the formation of bimodal cellular structures, while foams irradiated with the highest dose, exhibited more uniform cellular structure. In the latter case, the nucleation density clearly increased resulting in the formation of foams with homogeneous cellular structures and smaller cell sizes (≈20 m).