Fabrication and characterization of natural rubber composite (sir 5)/organo-montmorillonite using cetil trimetil ammonium bromide as a surface modifier

Abstract

The research on fabrication and characterization of natural rubber composites (SIR 5)/organo-montmorillonite using cetil trimetil ammonium bromide (CTAB) as an organic modifier has been conducted. Natural rubber SIR-5 was masticated at 60 °C by applying the time variations of 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 minutes using two-roll mill. SIR-5 which has been masticated for 4 minutes as an optimum time with the smallest moleecular-weight was then grafted by glysidil methacrylate (GMA) in order to obtain natural rubber-grafted-glysidil methacrylate (natural rubber-g-GMA) which was used as a compatibilizer material. A 10 g of montmorillonite was modified by using CTAB with different concentrations of 0, 0.01, 0.03, 0.05, and 0.07 molee and then was added into rubber SIR-5 and natural rubber-g-GMA using internal mixer to obtain the composite. The prepared composite sample was examined using ASTM D-638 in order to perform a low speed tensile test (1 mm/minutes) and a thermal test using thermogravimetri analysis (TGA) operated at 30-80 °C. The surface morphology of composite was analyzed by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) operated at 15 kV. The result of optimum elasticity which was achieved by adding montmorillonit produced using CTAB concentration of 0.03 molee was 1.57 MPa and had the value of the elongation at break of 2396%. Thermal degradation analysis using TGA showed that the most decomposed mass was 63.11% at 426 °C. The analysis of the morphology using SEM showed homogenous surface of the composite.