Impact of rubber surface interactions on the morphology of clusters

ABSTRACT

We studied the influence of the adhesion strength of rubber chains and silica surfaces on the morphology of clusters by means of small-angle X-ray scattering experiments. We used mono- and bifunctional silanes and compare the results to untreated silica in different rubbers. We demonstrate a universal impact of the concentration on the cluster size and number of particles in agglomerates. The magnitude of the effects depends on the strength of the interactions between chains and particle surfaces. Best dispersion is obtained for bifunctional silanization.

KEYWORDS:

• Agglomerates
• elastomers
• hierarchical structures
• silica
• small-angle X-ray scattering

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr Earl Babcock, Jülich Centre for Neutron Science, for critically reading the manuscript. We acknowledge DESY (Hamburg, Germany), a member of the Helmholtz Association HGF, for the provision of experimental facilities. Parts of this research were carried out at HASYLAB for travel funding and we would like to thank S. Roth, R. Döhrmann, M. Dommach, and Rainer Gehrke, for assistance in using wiggler beamline BW4.