Room temperature self-healable natural rubber
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Date
2018-06
Authors
Nur Syamsinar Sardi
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Abstract
Indeed to the properties of rubber which can sustain large deflection with little
deformation. However, rubber still fail through fracture and fatigue over their service
period. Emerging self-healing provides capability to arrest crack propagation at early
stage and thereby preventing catastrophic failure. The aim of this work was to produce
self-healing natural rubber that have capability to heal themselves spontaneously and
autonomously at room temperature.
Firstly, there were 2 stages implemented zinc thiolate was employed as self healing agent with peroxide induced vulcanization to developed formation of covalent
and reversible bonds with the natural rubber and exploited it as a potential self-healable
materials. The amount of zinc thiolate was varied at four different levels (10 phr, 20 phr,
30 phr and 40 phr) to assess the optimum amount of zinc thiolate to achieve highest
healing capability. Tensile properties of cured rubbers before and after healing process
were measured using universal tensile tester to obtain healing efficiency of the materials.
The results revealed that the developed self-healing natural rubber able to recover 60%-
80% of its initial mechanical properties in a minutes and almost 100% in 10 minutes at
room temperature without the aid of any external resources. It was also found that 30
phr zinc thiolate produced samples with highest healing capability. Evidence from
Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) showed that the fracture area was fully recovered
after the healing processed.