Developing New Rubber Products Based on Polymer Physics Principles

The likelihood of success in the development of new elastomeric products and processes can be greatly improved by the use of the insights derived from polymer physics. While it is possible to discover innovations simply through the correlation of data, this can be done much more quickly and with a greater chance to succeed when rigorously derived principles are employed. This is because such relations allow the researcher to solve the “inverse problem” of, for instance, how to predict the chain structure needed to produce a given property, and not just what property a given structure will have. Both the higher rate of success and the speed of development can be crucial in commercial development. I will illustrate this by developments in several areas – the use of nanocomposites to control the permeability of tire innerliners, the tailoring of elastomer rheology by controlling the degree of molecular entanglement, and modifying the chemical structure of polymers to control their miscibility and compatibility and thus the performance of their blends.