Abstract
Rubber has found its widest use in industry because its properties can be altered and improved by compounding and cure to give strong, flexible, resilient products which are resistant to abrasion, impervious to fluids, electrically insulating, and relatively inert chemically. For such other desirable characteristics as resistance to oils and solvents, and freedom from attack by air, sunlight, and oxidizing materials, skillful compounding has brought marked improvements, but even better properties are needed to meet the demands of modern industry. The search for synthetic rubbers has been stimulated not merely by the desire for an economically independent source of supply, but also with the hope that there might be obtained materials having properties superior to the natural product. Whitby and Katz (4) have published a comprehensive historical treatise dealing with the development of numerous synthetic rubbers which have appeared in the last few years. It has been believed that linear polymers obtained from dienes hold most promise for the preparation of rubber-like materials. Carothers (1) has studied the relation between the structure of dienes and the types of polymerization products which may be obtained therefrom. On the basis of these data he inferred that, from the standpoint of their polymerization products, the best dienes will be of the type CH2:CXCH:CH2, in which X is an activating group other than alkyl or aryl. In general it has been found that there may be obtained polymerization products with physical properties equal to, or often superior to those of natural rubber, and with marked resistance to the action of solvents and chemicals. Among the many types of organic materials which will polymerize, the vinyl compounds only recently have been modified suitably to yield commercial rubber-like materials.
