Reusing ground tire rubber powder as thermoplastic elastomers with excellent superhydrophobicity and self-cleaning performance

Abstract

A simple, effective and inexpensive method was proposed to reuse ground tire rubber (GTR) powder by preparing a superhydrophobic surface via a molding process. The obtained superhydrophobic surface was based on low-density polyethylene (LDPE) / ground tire rubber (GTR) thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs) where the styrene-butadiene-styrene block copolymer (SBS) was used as compatibilizer and series sandpapers were used as templates. The mechanical properties, hydrophobic properties, surface morphology and self-cleaning property were investigated systematically. The results showed that both of the mechanical properties and superhydrophobicity could be greatly improved with a certain amount of SBS. The superhydrophobic surface based on molded LDPE/SBS/GTR (weight ratio = 40/15/60) TPE exhibited excellent superhydrophobicity (with a contact angle of 164.6° ± 3.0° and a tilt angle of 4.4° ± 1.9°). Furthermore, abundant tearing microstructure could be found obviously by morphology observation. Optical images indicated the surface possessed of low adhesion force and self-cleaning property.

Effect of Ground Tire Rubber on Mechanical Properties of Low Density Polyethylene

“…Natural rubber offers low moving opposition and further develops mileage. It is amazingly impervious to cutting, chipping, and tearing [18,19].…”

“…So the flexural strength was calculated at 25 % deformation. The blended material shows good flexibility by reducing the stiffness of the overall composition [11,15,16,19,22].…”