Study On New Preparation Of High Performance Natural Rubber/Montmorillonite Composites

Study on new preparation of high performance natural rubber/montmorillonite compositesPolymer/montmorillonite nanocomposite is a kind of novel composite due to the excellent properties as well as their wide applications in the future. Owing to the surface of nano-phase, nanocomposites exhibit a high performance such as mechanical property, thermal resistance, electrical property, magnetic property, optic property and gas/liquid barrier than conventional filled composites, thus preparation of nanocomposites is an important approach to obtain high performance composites. At present, there are many successful approaches to prepare nanocomposites, but the reaction is complex and hard to control, and furthermore, the dispersion of clay is hard to be equality and the cost is high.The aims of this study on natural rubber/ montmorillonite nanocomposites are to solve the above problems and to improve the properties of natural rubber .Organic montmorillonite(OMMT) suspended solution was produced via multi-solvent method, and used to prepare natural rubber/montmorillonite nanocomposites by condensed natural rubber latex and fresh natural rubber latex, respectively. X-Ray diffraction(XRD) results showed that the distances of the interlayer is enlarged significantly, and the rubber latex particles can intercalate into the silicate sheets, thus formed an exfoliated nanocomposite. SEM results showed that the thickness of the silicate sheets is between 100nm to 200nm, and the composites were exfoliated nanocomposites. The study of mechanical properties showed that when filled content of OMMT is between 6wt% to 8wt%, the 300% and 500% modulus of composites is increased 87% and 190%, respectively. The tensile strength of composite is increased 49.5%, and the tear strength is increased 11.9% while the elongation at break of composite does not decrease significantly.Using orthogonal revolving, regressive and combinatorialdesign of the second power to study four key factors and got the regressive equation which can provide instructions for practical produce, and analyzed the effect of four factors on the properties of composites. The results showed that when the OMMT concentration is about 7%, dispersant concentration is about 50%, rubber latex concentration is about 20. 1% and OMMT content is about 7%, the properties of composites would be optimal.