Structural Characterization of Sulfur-Vulcanized Rubber Networks

Abstract Studies of the chemistry of vulcanization today occupy a central position in current efforts to achieve better product performance from available natural and synthetic rubbers. They provide technologists with increasingly realistic pictures of the molecular make-up of vulcanizates from which relations between physical properties and chemical structure may be deduced. In addition these studies are aimed at an understanding of vulcanization, sufficiently advanced in chemical mechanistic terms, to permit the effect of changes in curing system on vulcanizate structure to be rationally predicted. Perhaps the most important and fascinating aspect of current activities in vulcanization chemistry is the problem of determining the structure of rubber vulcanizates. Part of this problem forms the subject of this Review. In order to keep this article within reasonable proportions two limits have been observed. First, attention in Section IV has been restricted to “sulfur-vulcanized” rubbers, i.e., where vulc...