Nanocomposites and nanomaterial

Characteristics of elastomers filled with carbon nanotubes
Cherniuk O.A., Zhuravsky S.V., Sementsov Yu.I., Kartel M.T.
Chuiko Institute of Surface Chemistry, NAS of Ukraine,
17 General Naumov Str., Kyiv 03164, Ukraine. garbear@ukr.net

The use of rubber for supersonic aircraft and spacecraft is limited by high demands on the heat and frost resistance of materials, as well as their stability under conditions of exposure to the radiation and in vacuum. Therefore, the development of new rubber with improved characteristics, as well as other polymeric composite materials, is a topical issue.
It is known that the introduction of nanoparticles into a polymeric matrix affects the structure of the composite material (the degree of crystallinity of the matrix), as well as increases the physical-mechanical characteristics, electrical and thermal conductivity, thermo-oxide stability. 
Therefore, a complex of physico-chemical characteristics was studied, including chemical and thermal stability, oil-gas-resistant, chemically resistant rubber having different mechanisms of polymerization (vulcanization), based on butadiene-nitrile (BNR), silicone (SKTN) and fluororubber SKF-32, depending on the concentration of carbon nanotubes (CNT) and their pre-treatment.
It has been established that for all types of studied elastomers, the introduction of carbon nanotubes influences all investigated properties of nanocomposites: decreases deformation of fracture, increases tensile strength, hardness, thermal and chemical resistance, decreases the effect of "aging", wears resistance of nanocomposites. The introduction of CNT into the IRP-1225 system in an amount up to 1.5% (by mass) causes the effect of "softening" the system over the long duration of sulfuric acid, contrary to the usual hardening effect and increase the fragility. Strengthening of elastomers is not an isolated phenomenon at the boundary of the phase distribution, but is a complex colloid-chemical process of formation of the inter-phase region and vulcanization structures in the carbon-rubber nodes of the rubber mesh. It should be noted that the dependencies are not linear, and one can find the optimal value of the concentration of CNT in terms of consumer characteristics.