Gas barrier properties of butyl rubber/vermiculite nanocomposite coatings

Gas barrier properties of butyl rubber/vermiculite nanocomposites coatings are described here. The coating formulations consisting of a butyl rubber latex (the rubber particles are about 1 μm in diameter) to which exfoliated vermiculite was added were applied to a poly(2,6-dimethyl-1,4-phenylene oxide) (PPO) coated Anapore ceramic disc; composites containing 0, 20 and 30 wt% of vermiculite were evaluated. The permeability of the nanocomposite coatings to various gases was measured and compared to permeation models for composites with flake-like fillers proposed by Cussler, Nielsen, Fredrickson and Bicerano, and Gusev and Lusti. The gas permeability of the nanocomposite materials was decreased remarkably by the presence of the high loadings of vermiculite. Diffusion coefficients computed from time lag data also decreased remarkably with the vermiculite content. TEM and SEM were used to observe the internal structure of the nanocomposite membranes in an effort to gain further understanding of the permeability properties. Aspect ratios ranging from 100 to 480 were predicted from the gas permeation results and the above models. TEM experiments could not provide a precise estimate of the aspect ratio but the range predicted from the models are of this order. Apparent solubility coefficients, computed by dividing the experimental permeability by the diffusivity obtained from the time lag observation, increased significantly with vermiculite content in contradiction to the theoretical prediction. Independent gas sorption isotherm experiments for CO2 were measured and found to be larger than that in butyl rubber possibly due to adsorption on the vermiculite. While this turned out to be a very complicated system, it seems clear from these results that the transient tortuosity factor defined by the time lag is significantly larger than the steady-state tortuosity factor defined by permeability.