P15
Surface Engineering Approach for Enhanced Filler Dispersion and Hysteresis Reduction in Carbon Black Filled Rubber Compounds
Prasad Rauta, Nicole Swansonb, Coleen Pughb and Sadhan C. Janaa
aDepartment of Polymer Engineering, The University of Akron, OH, 44325, USA
bDepartment of Polymer Science, The University of Akron, OH, 44325, USA
Coupling agents produce a bridge or a link between the filler and the rubber matrix. The bridge or the link can be physical or chemical in nature. This study investigates the role of novel poly(butadiene-graft-pentafluorostyrene) (PB-g-PPFS) as a physical coupling agent between carbon black and styrene butadiene rubber (SBR) leading to the reduction of hysteresis loss and enhanced filler networking in rubber compounds. Efforts to reduce the hysteresis loss is considered via suppression of filler particle networking. PPFS domains in PB-g-PPFS provide an electron-deficient π-ring system that can couple with electron-rich graphitic content of carbon black via arene-perfluoroarene interactions. This coupling leads to increased interactions between the filler and the rubber matrix with PB as the backbone having a better affinity for the SBR in the rubber compound. The arene-perfluoroarene interactions have been confirmed by zeta potential measurements. Filler flocculation analysis (Payne effect) showed that the addition of the coupling agent results in better dispersion and lower energy dissipation. The viscoelastic dissipation reduced by as much as 12 % due to improved filler-rubber interactions promoted by the PB-g-PPFS. The effect of the PPFS graft molecular weight in PB-g-PPFS was also studied.