| Summary: | Achieving self-healing properties in natural rubber would be of paramount industrial and ecological significance for extending its lifetime and reducing waste. A series of self-healing natural rubber composites based on an intrinsically reversible ionic network was developed by mixing natural rubber with different loading of silica fillers (0, 5, 10, 15, and 20 phr). The rubber matrix was integrated with zinc thiolate in the presence of dicumyl peroxide prior to the silica filler addition. For unfilled samples, the tensile strength recovery was almost 100% in just 10 min at room temperature. However, the efficiency reduced to 63.49% with the incorporation of 5 phr silica. The elongation at break and its self-healing efficiency decreased gradually as the amount of silica was increased. All samples showed outstanding properties under the tearing mode where the healed samples produced higher tear strength than the initial tear strength. SEM images showed that the silica addition caused a broader gap on the healed cut position. Swelling tests were used to confirm the formation of ionic and covalent crosslinks in the molecular chains. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
|
|---|