No abstract

With excellent comprehensive performance, natural rubber (NR) was widely used in the tyre industry [1][2][3] . In general, the reinforcing agents such as carbon black (CB)and silicon need to be added into the NR for strengthening the mechanical properties to meet the application requirements. Even if CB is one of the most widely employed reinforcing agents 4 , however, CB is derived from petroleum resources usually accompanied with serious environmental pollution. In addition, despite the silicon will not contaminate products, practical limitations arising from the potential safety issues resulting from electrostatic charge accumulation. Besides, kaolin and silicate are often used to fill in NR. Unfortunately, the reinforcing isworse than that enhanced by CB 5,6 . In recent years, as the growing depletion of oil resources and the improvement on environmental protection consciousness, people try to take advantage of starch, with the characteristics of abundance, renewability and biodegradability, to replace the CB 7,8 .However, the size of the starch particles is too big to disperse well in the rubber matrix. Thus, the large size limits to prepare higher performance starch/natural rubber composites. While, Goodyear tyre and Rubber Company addressed this issue by using maize SNC as rubber reinforces filler to