Improving thermo‐oxidative stability and mediums resistance of nitrile rubber via surface superhydrophobic modification

Abstract Recently, the research of blending anti‐aging modification of nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR) has been widely reported, but the surface effect in the rubber aging process has been obviously ignored. Starting from the surface microstructure design, the construction of surface protection barrier may be a new anti‐aging way. In this paper, the surface superhydrophobic NBR surf ‐polydopamine (PDA)‐(SiO 2 ‐g‐PFOMA) is prepared through a ordered modification of two‐step physical deposition to NBR with PDA and SiO 2 grafted with Perfluorooctylmethacrylate (SiO 2 ‐g‐PFOMA). By comparing the mechanical properties before and after aging, it is found that the DA surface pretreatment significantly improves the NBR thermo‐oxidative aging. On this basis, surface superhydrophobic SiO 2 ‐g‐PFOMA microstructure has set up to further prevents NBR from the attack of corrosive media such as acid, alkali, salt and water. After aging in HCl solution at 90°C for 96 h, the fracture strength, elongation and aging coefficient of NBR surf ‐PDA‐(SiO 2 ‐g‐PFOMA) compared with unmodified NBR(KB) were increased by 2.28 MPa, 48.76% and 0.18, respectively. This work can offer an surface anti‐aging technology to NBR.