Reactions of radicals in filled rubber compounds : II. Generation and subsequent reactions of radicals upon deformation

Abstract Effect of stretching on oxidative crosslinking of a carbon black filled IR vulcanizate at a normal temperature was studied by means of ESR and crosslink density measurements. Upon deformation, ESR intensity increased and crosslink density decreased, indicating scission of load supporting bonds generating free radicals. Bond scission increased with increasing strain. Resting after deformation, the ESR intensity decayed steadily following simple combination of first order and second order kinetics. The decay was overwhelmingly caused by first order reactions, which were considered to be irrelevant to crosslinking. On the other hand, crosslink density increased during resting. The results strongly suggested that ESR observed the radicals at the surface of the carbon black filled rubber, while crosslink density evaluated the bulk property. The crosslink density increase during resting outweighed the reduction due to deformation. Deformation accompanied by radical generation apparently accelerated oxi...