Electrospinning of Butyl Rubber With Carbon Black – Creating Superhydrophobic Surfaces

Electrospinning of Butyl Rubber with Carbon Black – Creating Superhydrophobic Surfaces

Artee Panwar¹, Christine Lang², Hemant N Prabhu¹, Carol Barry¹, Joey Mead¹

¹University of Massachusetts, Lowell

²University of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt

Superhydophobic surfaces are of increasing interest in a variety of applications, including textiles.  Control of the fiber structure and properties offers potential for preparing unique textiles with superhydrophobic properties.  In particular, the electropsinning process, which is widely used for fabricating nanofibers, can be used to create novel textile structures.  In this work, the electrospinning process was used to produce microfibers of carbon black filled thermoset butyl rubber compounds and to characterize their hydrophobic behavior.  Surface properties were analyzed using contact angle measurements and scanning electron microscopy.  The effect of different factors such as carbon black loading, suspension viscosity and drop size, on the contact angle measurements was studied.   The water contact angle properties were affeted by carbon black loading, viscosity and drop size. SEM analysis showed that fiber dimensions were affected by carbon black loading.