Abstract
The effect of oxidized blacks on the stress-strain properties and bound-rubber content of butyl and SBR was discussed in the preceding paper. Oxidized blacks, when compared with similar untreated blacks, were shown to have a greatly increased reinforcing capacity in butyl. Oxygen functionality on carbon black, it was therefore concluded, is essential in butyl to produce the chemical reactivity which is required between polymer and black if high-order reinforcement is to be obtained. Oxygen functionality on carbon black, it was also demonstrated, is not only not required for enhanced reinforcement in SBR, but it is in fact a deterrent, because it exerts severe restraining effects on the cure of the resulting vulcanizates as well. These interesting results were proposed to provide qualitative but convincing evidence that carbon-polymer bonding, which we believe is requisite to reinforcement, is achieved by different mechanisms in butyl and SBR. In butyl, the unique sensitivity of the stress-strain curve to reinforcing effects was used to speculate on the disposition of carbon blacks in “filled” and reinforced vulcanizates, respectively. With oxidized blacks, reinforcement effects were pictured as stiffening effects which, starting with the gum vulcanizates, caused the stress-strain curve to be shifted without intrinsic changes in its shape. The resulting “reinforced gum,” it was suggested, derived its physical characteristics from the fact that carbon black was included in the vulcanized rubber network. With untreated blacks, in “filled” systems, carbon black was pictured as being enmeshed or entangled in an independently formed vulcanized rubber network. The stiffening effects in this case were attributed to viscous contributions arising from steric restrictions which the occluded carbon particles were thought to impose on both initial movements and the subsequent orientation of network chains when the sample was extended.