Morphology and Crystallization Behavior of Lightly Crosslinked Natural Rubber in Blend

Abstract

Abstract Isothermal crystallization of natural rubber (NR) dispersed in styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR) was made at −25 °C to investigate effects of both gel fraction of the rubber and morphology of the blend on the crystallization. NR, thus used, was lightly crosslinked model compound (model-NR), which was cured with dicumylperoxide at 160 °C after mastication. The model-NR was mechanically mixed with a large amount of SBR to form droplets of the rubber, a size of which was dependent upon both gel content and crosslink density of the gel fraction. The crystallization of the model-NR in the droplets was quite slow, corresponding to the level reported in the previous work. A rate of crystallization and Avrami exponent were dependent upon the size of the droplets, but not on the gel content and the crosslink density of the model-NR. The suppression in the crystallization was attributed to the homogeneous nucleation occurring in the droplets. This finding was proved, using rubbers obtained from two clones of Hevea brasiliensis, i.e. RRIM600 and RRIM2025, respectively.