In-Situ Generation of Silica Nanoparticles in Solution Styrene Butadiene Rubber -a Possible Material Solution to Improve the Performance of Rubber

From material’s point of view, silica filled tires are a novel solution to improve the fuel efficiency of PC vehicles by reducing the tire rolling resistance. Additionally, they also offer good wet grip which are very important from the safety perspective. However, the proper dispersion of the silica in rubber compounds is a challenging task. In our present work, a silica based solution styrene butadiene rubber composites was developed followed by the synthesis of in-situ sol-gel silica. These silica particles were allowed to grow in the presences of rubber in the reaction mixture. It was found that the size of the synthesized silica particles are rather large than standard precipitated commercial silica. But the final mechanical and other properties of our derived materials are better as compared with commercial silica at a given loading of fillers. Presence of higher number of active hydroxyl group in the synthesized silica and permanent grafting of the rubber chains onto the silica particles enable the compounds to offer good mechanical reinforcement, higher resilience, and dynamic mechanical properties. The rubber-filler interactions, filler-filler interactions and the mechanism of in-situ silica reinforcement in rubber are further analyzed by dynamic mechanical analysis, transmission electron microscopic studies, solid state NMR studies etc. Therefore, such an approach very clearly shows a possible alternative method to improve the silica dispersion and rubber-filler interactions in the silica rubber compounds.