Abstract
There were many studies on the co-curing in dissimilar elastomer blends and the problems of the interfacial crosslink in blend have received recent attention.
In order to resolve these problems, we attempted to measure the average distance between vulcanization points and to analyze the photograph of electron microscope in EPDM/NR blend. As a result, it was found that the crosslink of EPDM phase in EPDM/NR blend gradually increased with progress of cure time but the co-curing could not be achieved because of no forming of the interfacial crosslink between EPDM and NR phase. On the other hand, it was found that the network chain of P-EPDM phase in blend was not formed sufficiently, although much improvement was made over EPDM/NR blend, but the co-curing could be achieved because of forming of the interfacial crosslink in blending NR with the pendent sulfur EPDM which was reacted with sulfur and accelerator without zinc oxide.
