THE EFFECT OF PLASMA FUNCTIONALISATXON OF CARBON NANOMATERIAL ADDITIVES ON THE MECHANICAL AND PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF NATURAL RUBBER

摘要

Elastomeric materials have always relied upon the use of carbon based additives,such as carbon black,to impart both mechanical and physical properties to the elastomeric matrix.These materials are manufactured with a degree of surface functionality,such as chemisorbed oxygen complexes,which enables these materials to covalently bond into the elastomeric matrix,it is this chemical bonding that ensures that that the carbon based additive materials can successfully impart the required properties to the final elastomeric component or product.Since the discovery of carbon nanotubes in 1991 by Ijima(1)and graphene in 2004 by Geim and Novoselov(2),there has been a lot of both academic and industrial interest in using these carbon nanomaterials as additives in polymers due to their theoretically excellent mechanical,electrical and thermal conductivity properties.However,because as prepared carbon nanotubes and graphene have little or no surface functionality it is a challenge to realise the full theoretical properties of these materials in elastomeric compounds,without post-treatment,as they cannot adequately chemically bond with the elastomeric matrix.Here we investigate the use of a patented plasma functionalisation process(3)to add a variety of different surface functionalities to graphene family nanomaterials which enable them to chemically bond to a natural rubber matrix and impart a range of both physical and mechanical properties to the elastomeric materials,which are reported and discussed in this paper,and that are of commercial interest.