Studies of the Vulcanization of Rubber

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Abstract
In this study much information about the method of distinguishing the state in which sulfur is combined in simple organic compounds consisting of carbon, hydrogen, and sulfur was obtained, and a new theory of vulcanization was postulated as a result of its application to vulcanized rubber. When activated sulfur reacts with rubber, it first adds to the double bonds, forming thioketones, which in turn, as a characteristic of these radicals, combine with each other, with the formation of a thioether structure. This transformation of thioketone into thioether takes place, not only during vulcanization, but also gradually after vulcanization. Because of the presence of thioketone, treatment of vulcanized rubber with hydrazine, forms a new network, that is, a ketoazine cross-linkage. Combined sulfur of the thioketone type was determined by an oxidizing agent, and as the difference of this value and total combined sulfur a method of determining bridge type of combined sulfur has been proposed. By this method, it was found that, even in ebonite, about one-third of the combined sulfur is the thioketone type, and that the bridge type is only about two-thirds of the total. The thioketone type of combined sulfur in soft vulcanized rubber is transformed gradually into the thioether type of cross-linkage when allowed to stand at room temperature, and this transformation is accelerated when the temperature is raised. In the case of hard rubber, this phenomenon is also observable, but the rate of this transformation is much slower compared to the former. This tendency is the same in the case of ketoazine cross-linking when rubber vulcanizates are treated with hydrazine. From these facts, it seems that the distribution of the thioketone radicals is not uniform, and the magnitude of the probability for collision of these radicals to form cross-linkages has a great influence on the properties of rubber after vulcanization. That is, the property of the vulcanizate is greatly affected by the fact whether the thioketone radicals in the vulcanizates are comparatively uniformly distributed or whether they exist in sectional groups or in colonies. The authors are the first to advance this postulate concerning the chemical structure of vulcanized rubber and its transformation. We believe that when the study is extended, using this postulation, problems such as aging and the differences in the properties of vulcanized rubber accelerated with various accelerators will become clear. Moreover, we believe that it will be of interest to physicists studying rubber elasticity to suggest this idea of colony of cross-linkages. We are now carrying on researches on these problems, and we shall report on them later.

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