Study of the Effect of Ion implanation in Pre-vulcanized Natural rubber Latex

Abstract

It has been reported that implant doping can create an insulator-semiconductor transition in Natural Rubber (cis 1, 4 polyisoprene), a member of the well-known butadiene family, in the unvulcanized state using N + ion. In this paper, we report, for the first time, the ion beam bombardment in Radiation Vulcanized Natural Rubber Latex (RVNRL) using N + ion with energy 60 keV in the fluence range of 10 14 to 10 16 ions/cm 2 . The electrical conductivity shows about 10 orders of magnitude compared to the virgin state and is found to be increase with increasing fluence rate. Besides the UV/Vis and FTIR spectroscopic studies indicate the presence of new peaks with increase of fluence suggesting the formation of an ion beam induced conjugation in the polyisoprene backbone. A dramatic reduction in the optical band gap with the ion fluence, is also observed. The surface morphology of the implanted films has been studied by scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy which indicate that the implantation of N + ions on polyisoprene surfaces introduces surface smoothening. Besides, an effort has been made to correlate the structural changes produced by both chemical and implant doping.