Multi-walled carbon nanotubes acting as antioxidant for fluorosilicone rubber

A small addition amount (0.01-4 phr) of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) were blended into fluorosilicone rubber (FSR) in order to improve its thermal aging properties, and the paper was investigated from three aspects: (1) the distribution of MWCNTs inside FSR was characterized using scanning electron microscope (SEM); (2) the thermal stability of FSR and FSR/MWCNTs was evaluated by the changes of mechanical performance and weight loss in the thermo-oxidative aging process, and the function mechanism of MWCNTs was studied by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), chemiluminescence (CL), electron spin resonance (ESR) and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) measurements; (3) the vulcanization properties of FSR and FSR/MWCNT5 were obtained from their vulcanization curves employing three kinds of peroxides as vulcanizers. The results showed MWCNTs, with a homogeneous distribution inside FSR, had significantly improved the antioxidant performance of FSR due to their powerful radical scavenging activity. Moreover, MWCNTs revealed no scavenging effect on the tertbutoxy radical, which ensured that FSR/MWCNT5 could be well vulcanized. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.