Study of rheological behavior and miscibility of epoxidized natural rubber modified neoprene

The Mooney viscosity, curing rates, vulcanization behavior, and the relationship between molecular motion of epoxidized natural rubber (ENR) and neoprene (CR) blends at different blending ratios have been studied. The experimental results of ENR/CR blends show that the Mooney viscosity decreased gradually. Plasticization was most pronounced at an ENR/CR ratio of 75/25 and is thus the easiest to process. Owing to the ring opening of the epoxy group of ENR, the rate of crosslink formation is much faster than that of CR at higher temperature. The vulcanized rate increased with increasing ENR content. The results indicated that 175 °C and 5 min were the optimum processing conditions for ENR/CR blends. The DMA spectra showed a single damping peak for the ENR/CR blends, which suggests that ENR and CR are miscible. As seen in the Arrhenius plot of frequency against T _g, the activation energy increased with increasing ENR contents. This suggests the existence of interpenetration of these two rubber molecular networks.