Effect of Nonisoprene Degradation and Naturally Occurring Network during Maturation on the Properties of Natural Rubber

It well-known that the superior performance of natural rubber (NR) compared to its synthetic counterpart mainly derives from nonisoprene components and naturally occurring network, which varies during the progress of the maturation and thereby results in technically graded rubber with different prop...

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Autores principales: Chen, Guojing, Wang, Bingbing, Lin, Hongtu, Peng, Wenfeng, Zhang, Fuquan, Li, Gaorong, Ke, Dongbin, Liao, Jianhe, Liao, Lusheng
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9183052/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35683854
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym14112180
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author Chen, Guojing
Wang, Bingbing
Lin, Hongtu
Peng, Wenfeng
Zhang, Fuquan
Li, Gaorong
Ke, Dongbin
Liao, Jianhe
Liao, Lusheng
author_facet Chen, Guojing
Wang, Bingbing
Lin, Hongtu
Peng, Wenfeng
Zhang, Fuquan
Li, Gaorong
Ke, Dongbin
Liao, Jianhe
Liao, Lusheng
author_sort Chen, Guojing
collection PubMed
description It well-known that the superior performance of natural rubber (NR) compared to its synthetic counterpart mainly derives from nonisoprene components and naturally occurring network, which varies during the progress of the maturation and thereby results in technically graded rubber with different properties. However, identifying the roles of these two factors in the forming of excellent performance of NR is still a challenge as they change simultaneously during the maturation process. Here, influences of naturally occurring networking and nonisoprene degradation on the components, structures and properties of NR were systematically investigated by tailored treatments of maturation. It was found that the maturation-induced formation of natural network structure contributes to the increase in initial plastic value, Mooney viscosity and gel content for un-crosslinked NR, while the decomposition of nonisoprene components plays a dominant role in improving the mechanical properties of vulcanized NR. Stress-strain curve and Mooney-Rivlin analysis demonstrate that the biodegradation of the nonisoprene components significantly boost the vulcanization process, which significantly increases the number of chemical cross-link networks and effective cross-link density of the material, greatly improving the mechanical properties of NR vulcanizates. This resulted in the tensile strength of TSR 10CV being able to reach 22.6 MPa, which is significantly improved compared to 15.8 MPa of TSR 3CV. Evidenced by tubular model fitting, the increase in chemical cross-linking points effectively reduces the movable radius of the molecular chain under dynamic loading, making the molecular chain more difficult to move, which suppresses the entropy change under dynamic loading and consequently endows NR excellent dynamic mechanical properties. This resulted in a significant decrease in the temperature rising of TSR 10CV to 3.3 °C, while the temperature rising of TSR 3CV was still as high as 14.5 °C. As a minor factor, the naturally occurring network improves the mechanical properties of vulcanizates in the form of sacrificial bonds.
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spelling pubmed-91830522022-06-10 Effect of Nonisoprene Degradation and Naturally Occurring Network during Maturation on the Properties of Natural Rubber Chen, Guojing Wang, Bingbing Lin, Hongtu Peng, Wenfeng Zhang, Fuquan Li, Gaorong Ke, Dongbin Liao, Jianhe Liao, Lusheng Polymers (Basel) Article It well-known that the superior performance of natural rubber (NR) compared to its synthetic counterpart mainly derives from nonisoprene components and naturally occurring network, which varies during the progress of the maturation and thereby results in technically graded rubber with different properties. However, identifying the roles of these two factors in the forming of excellent performance of NR is still a challenge as they change simultaneously during the maturation process. Here, influences of naturally occurring networking and nonisoprene degradation on the components, structures and properties of NR were systematically investigated by tailored treatments of maturation. It was found that the maturation-induced formation of natural network structure contributes to the increase in initial plastic value, Mooney viscosity and gel content for un-crosslinked NR, while the decomposition of nonisoprene components plays a dominant role in improving the mechanical properties of vulcanized NR. Stress-strain curve and Mooney-Rivlin analysis demonstrate that the biodegradation of the nonisoprene components significantly boost the vulcanization process, which significantly increases the number of chemical cross-link networks and effective cross-link density of the material, greatly improving the mechanical properties of NR vulcanizates. This resulted in the tensile strength of TSR 10CV being able to reach 22.6 MPa, which is significantly improved compared to 15.8 MPa of TSR 3CV. Evidenced by tubular model fitting, the increase in chemical cross-linking points effectively reduces the movable radius of the molecular chain under dynamic loading, making the molecular chain more difficult to move, which suppresses the entropy change under dynamic loading and consequently endows NR excellent dynamic mechanical properties. This resulted in a significant decrease in the temperature rising of TSR 10CV to 3.3 °C, while the temperature rising of TSR 3CV was still as high as 14.5 °C. As a minor factor, the naturally occurring network improves the mechanical properties of vulcanizates in the form of sacrificial bonds. MDPI 2022-05-27 /pmc/articles/PMC9183052/ /pubmed/35683854 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym14112180 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Chen, Guojing
Wang, Bingbing
Lin, Hongtu
Peng, Wenfeng
Zhang, Fuquan
Li, Gaorong
Ke, Dongbin
Liao, Jianhe
Liao, Lusheng
Effect of Nonisoprene Degradation and Naturally Occurring Network during Maturation on the Properties of Natural Rubber
title Effect of Nonisoprene Degradation and Naturally Occurring Network during Maturation on the Properties of Natural Rubber
title_full Effect of Nonisoprene Degradation and Naturally Occurring Network during Maturation on the Properties of Natural Rubber
title_fullStr Effect of Nonisoprene Degradation and Naturally Occurring Network during Maturation on the Properties of Natural Rubber
title_full_unstemmed Effect of Nonisoprene Degradation and Naturally Occurring Network during Maturation on the Properties of Natural Rubber
title_short Effect of Nonisoprene Degradation and Naturally Occurring Network during Maturation on the Properties of Natural Rubber
title_sort effect of nonisoprene degradation and naturally occurring network during maturation on the properties of natural rubber
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9183052/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35683854
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym14112180
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