New fabricate of styrene–butadiene rubber/montmorillonite nanocomposites by anionic polymerization

Styrene–butadiene rubber/montmorillonite (SBR/MMT) nanocomposites were successfully synthesized by in situ living anionic polymerization with n-BuLi as initiator. The results from kinetics study and 1H NMR indicated that the addition of organophilic montmorillonite (OMMT) did not changed the living copolymerization and the components of the copolymer on the whole when OMMT content was lower than 3 wt %. However, gel permeation chromatography showed that the introduction of OMMT resulted in small amount of high-molecular weight fraction of SBR in the composites, leading to an increase in the weight-average molecular weight and polydispersity index, but the unchangeableness of the number-average molecular weight. The result from transmission electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction revealed that a completely exfoliated structure existed in the nanocomposite with 25 wt % styrene and OMMT content from 1 to 4 wt %, and styrene played an important role in the expanding of OMMT layers. Moreover, the nanocomposites possessed higher glass-transition temperature, thermal stability, tensile strength and elongation at break than SBR when the OMMT content ranged from 2.5 to 4 wt %. A schema was proposed to illustrate the formation of the nanocomposite and the exfoliation structure with physical cross-linking between SBR chains and OMMT.