Enabling Superior Thermo–Oxidative Resistance Elastomers Based on a Structure Recovery Strategy

Abstract

Thermo–oxidative process leads to the structure damage of elastomers, such as the scission of main chains and destruction of crosslinks. The problem that damaged structure brings about the deterioration of mechanical properties has not been solved by the conventional anti‐aging methods. Inspired by self‐healing process, a structure recovery strategy for recovering the damaged structure induced by thermo–oxidative process is proposed, which endows elastomers with superior thermo–oxidative resistance. The high reactivity between 1,3‐diisopropenylbenzene and free radicals realizes high recovery efficiency (from 83% to 118%); the changes in topology structure during recovery process make much more rubber chains bear external stress and improve mechanical properties significantly (from 18.5 to 29.6 MPa). This work paves the way for the development of elastomers with superior thermo–oxidative resistance, meanwhile this work is helpful to push the theoretical research of self‐healing to practical application.

Nucleophiles realizing the reduction of ZnO content for vulcanization accompanied by the improvement in thermo‐oxidative resistance for vulcanized isoprene rubbers

“…Thermo‐oxidative resistance is an extraordinarily important property for rubber materials 25–29 . During thermo‐oxidative processes, ZnO tends to aggerate in rubber matrixes, which reduces thermo‐oxidative resistance of rubbers 30 .…”

“…Thermo-oxidative resistance is an extraordinarily important property for rubber materials. [25][26][27][28][29] During thermooxidative processes, ZnO tends to aggerate in rubber matrixes, which reduces thermo-oxidative resistance of rubbers. 30 The aggregation extent of ZnO decreases with the reduction of ZnO content and then thermo-oxidative resistance of rubber matrixes improves in Figure 3a.…”

Toward Mechanically Robust Crosslinked Elastomers through Phase Transfer Agent Tuning the Solubility of Zn2+ in the Organic Phase

“…To highlight the importance of phase transfer agent to properties of crosslinked elastomers, we compare tensile strength, tear strength, and elongation at break among this work and the elastomers with different accelerators in Figure 4 c,d. The data of elastomers with different accelerators are from the previous works, containing N-cyclohexyl-2-benzothiazolesulfenamide (CZ) [ 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 ], diphenyl guanidine (D) [ 49 , 50 ], dibenzothiazyl disulfide (DM) [ 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 ], 2-mercaptobenzothiazole (M) [ 2 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 ], N-tert-butylbenzothiazole-2-sulphenamide (NS) [ 30 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 ], and tetra methyl thiuram disulfide (TMTD) [ 30...…”