Coupling Agents for Certain Types of Fluoroelastomers
Abstract From the data presented in this paper, it is concluded that fillers can be coupled with certain types of fluoroelastomer base polymers. A useful coupling agent must have mechanical and thermal properties at least equivalent to the base polymer in order to provide an improvement in properties for the compound under extreme service conditions. For the particular case of peroxide-curable fluoroelastomers and carbon fillers, hydroxy-terminated low-molecular-weight polybutadienes with high 1,2-microstructure appear to be good coupling agents. Care must be exercised in selecting the peroxide level to obtain a high crosslink density of the coupling agent while retaining rubberlike properties of the compound. This type of polybutadienediol has a relatively high number of reactive vinyl groups (approximately 20 per molecule) and relatively high molecular weight. Based upon the hypotheses presented in this paper, that coupling between carbon black and fluoroelastomers has been demonstrated for the first time, both higher molecular weight and multifunctionality of the polybutadienediol are viewed as important characteristics for effective performance.