Polymer materials such as rubber and plastics are prone to aging induced degradation, especially thermo-oxidative aging. In this paper, terahertz time-domain spectroscopy was employed to investigate the aging process of styrene butadiene rubber by spectrally following the evolution of its dielectric permittivity in the terahertz frequency region during prolonged high-temperature, accelerated, continuous thermo-oxidative aging. The real and imaginary parts of the dielectric constant in the 0.1-0.8 THz frequency band were obtained and analyzed, and shown to be consistent with present theoretical understanding. The study revealed a close relationship between the evolution of the rubber's dielectric permittivity and the material's physical response to the terahertz electromagnetic radiation during thermo-oxidative aging, manifesting a strong correlation between quantitative changes of the dielectric permittivity and the degree of aging, which can be understood qualitatively in terms of dynamical structural changes at the molecular level.
K E Y W O R D Sterahertz, rubber, thermo-oxidative aging, dielectric permittivity
| I NT RODU CTI ONThe polymer material styrene butadiene rubber (SBR), also known as polystyrene-butadiene copolymer, is currently the most popular man-made commercial rubber, accounting for more than 40% of sales, among all synthetic rubber materials, including butadiene rubber, styrene-butadiene rubber, isoprene rubber, and many others. 1 SBR resembles closely natural rubber, possessing many advantageous properties, such as wear-resistance and heat-resistance, higher curing rate compared with natural rubber, and good compatibility with natural rubbers and various synthetic rubbers. 2 As such it is widely used in aerospace, electronics, and automotive industries, as well as in consumer products such as appliances, apparel, and sporting goods, among many others. [3][4][5] Rubber is apt to suffer from aging due to high temperature, illumination, oxidation, hydrolysis, biodegradation, salt spray, and other environmental factors, 6,7 which degrades its quality and characteristic over time, and shortens its useful lifetime. Although aging of rubber is a natural phenomenon which is ultimately unavoidable, the prevention and retardation of aging, and proactive life prediction of rubber have been active research topics for many years. [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Owing to its plastic nature, there are inherently flaws in the molecular structure of rubber, making it easily susceptible to aging due to invasion of external oxygen atoms. SBR's macromolecular chain has a type of unsaturated double bond structure, which readily reacts with oxygen atoms under common ambient conditions. The whole process has three phases, including chain initiation, chain propagation, and chain termination, with the stable product of degradation and crosslink formed at last. Currently, among the detection technologies for prediction of rubber aging, online spectral inspection approaches are the most popular, including i...