Thermal oxidative and ozone oxidative stabilization effect of hybridized functional graphene oxide in a silica-filled solution styrene butadiene elastomer

Hybridization of modified functional graphene oxide (fGO) in silica-filled solution styrene butadiene rubber (SSBR) endows preferable tensile and dynamic properties before and after thermal oxidative aging, and similar mechanical hysteresis performance compared with the composites without fGO. The preventing mechanism of fGO is attributed to its intrinsic peroxy radical scavenging and gas barrier abilities, which significantly reduces the peroxy radical concentration and oxygen permeability of nanocomposites and then prolongs oxidative induction time (OIT), characterized by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The ozone resisting effect of different loadings of fGO on nanocomposites have also been investigated by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) after ozonization under 50 ppm ozone concentration. As a result, incorporation of fGO apparently suppresses both the formation of oxygenic groups of the olefinic elastomer and crack morphology extension upon ozonization. We propose that fGO protects the SSBR elastomer from ozone attack through the conjugated delocalized π-bonds of the fGO instead of the CC bonds of the elastomer matrix being attacked, and the compared experiments, characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), confirm that this presumption is perhaps reasonable. Moreover, more than 3 phr incorporation of fGO in nanocomposites deteriorates the chemical and mechanical properties of the elastomer during the thermal oxidation and ozonization because of the cleavage influence of oxygenic groups on peroxy radicals.