Natural Phenolic Compounds as Modifiers for Epoxidized Natural Rubber/Silica Hybrids

Silica is a popular filler, but in epoxidized natural rubber, can act as a cross-linking agent. Unfortunately, a high amount of silica is necessary to obtain satisfactory tensile strength. Moreover, a high amount of silica in ENR/silica hybrids is associated with low elongation at break. In our paper, we propose natural phenolic compounds, including quercetin, tannic acid, and gallic acid as natural and safe additional crosslinkers dedicated to ENR/silica hybrids to obtain bio-elastomers with improved mechanical properties. Therefore, toxic crosslinkers, such as peroxides or harmful accelerators can be eliminated. The impact of selected natural phenolic compounds on crosslinking effect, mechanical properties, color, and chemical structure of ENR/silica composite have been analyzed. The obtained results indicated that only 3 phr of selected natural phenolic compounds is able to improve crosslinking effect as well as mechanical properties of ENR/silica hybrids. Moreover, some of the prepared materials tend to regain mechanical properties after reprocessing. Such materials containing only natural and safe ingredients have a chance of becoming novel elastomeric biomaterials dedicated to biomedical applications.