High‐performance hydrogenated nitrile butadiene rubber composites by <i>in situ</i> interfacial design of nanoclays

Abstract

Abstract Considering industrial requests, it has become a hot issue to prepare advanced rubber composites with high strength and great toughness. Despite enhanced strength and stiffness, rubber composites suffer markedly reduced extensibility and toughness. Herein, a novel interfacial strategy is proposed to fabricate amine‐modified montmorillonite (MMT)/hydrogenated nitrile butadiene rubber composites by designing in situ ionic bond interfaces. The well‐distributed interfaces, which are composed of protonated amine groups on the MMT surfaces and electronegative methacrylic acid (MA), were constructed by adding a slurry with a small amount of MMT and MA to rubber. After the vulcanization, self‐polymerization of MA developed nanoparticles and grafting structures onto rubber chains to bond MMT by strong ion attractions. Although the crosslinking degree of rubber was reduced, the dispersion of MMT and its interfacial interactions with rubber were improved remarkably, as demonstrated by morphology observations, dynamic mechanical analysis and infrared spectra. As a result, the strength, modulus, elongation, toughness and gas barrier properties of the rubber composites were simultaneously strikingly improved relative to composites without MA modifiers. We believe that this work provides a promising methodology of fabricating high‐performance rubber composites. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry