Study of natural rubber crosslinked in the state of uniaxial deformation

A natural rubber (NR) film with the thickness of about 1 mm was prepared by removing the liquid phase from NR latex. Two types of NR films crosslinked by γ-irradiation were investigated: (i) samples irradiated in the relaxed state and (ii) samples irradiated in the state of uniaxial deformation. The total irradiation dose varied from 0 kGy (for nonirradiated NR) to 400 kGy and the degree of deformation, defined as λ=l/l0 (l0 and l being the lengths of relaxed and uniaxially deformed sample, respectively), was chosen to be λ=1.0 (relaxed state), λ=1.5 and λ=2.0. The amount of sol and gel phase of NR was determined by extracting the sol component in toluene. A significant decrease in the amount of the sol component (from 14.2% to 33.5%, depending on irradiation dose) was observed by increasing the irradiation dose. It has been shown that the application of deformation during the crosslinking leads to the lower crosslink density. Such an effect can be attributed to the loss of the gel component induced mechanically. The electron spin resonance (ESR) spectra of spin probe diffusing in the NR matrix crosslinked under deformation are influenced by both, the local dynamics of the chain segments and their spacious orientation.