Understanding the microstructure of materials such as rubber and thermoplastics can help design materials’ macrostructure properties. Microscopy can provide useful information in designing soft materials such as rubber compounds, starting with understanding the reinforcing filler’s dispersion in the elastomer matrix. Advanced microscopy instrumentation can go far beyond this dispersion characterization. Scanning and transmission electron microscopy (SEM and (S)TEM) coupled with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) are useful instrumentation used in phase characterization of soft materials.
Technical Notebook: Use of advanced microscopy to elucidate structure, mechanism of crosslinking rubber
TEM images of different conductive agents showing the different morphologies.
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Complementary insights on the presence of phases and the sulfur crosslinking process can be provided by imaging Raman spectroscopy. Case studies of rubber and polymer blends showcase the experimental challenges for the microscopist and demonstrate that the usage of microscopy goes one step beyond and provides crucial mechanistic, structure and performance-related information.
The main focus of this paper is to showcase various microscopy techniques used in elucidating the mechanism of ZnO and stearic acid of sulfur crosslinking and the polymeric phase morphology of a rubber blend.
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