O-rings and other rubber products tend to crack over time, which can be attributed to the traditional method of producing rubber. A typical rubber production involves heavy-handed mixing and other forceful steps that alter the material’s polymers. This results in shorter polymer chains that often lead to cracking. 

Through a paper published in Nature Sustainability, researchers from Harvard University have presented a new method of producing more durable rubber. Instead of adhering to the traditional rubber production process, the team opted for a gentler process in which polymers are not “masticated.”

Using a gentle method has enabled researchers to preserve the long polymer chains of the raw rubber. When processed, these chains form a “tanglemer,” which is a structure that has more long polymer chain tangles than the number of crosslinks between the chains in the structure.

According to the paper, it is the tanglemer structure that gives rubber better resistance to crack formation:

“At a crack tip in the tanglemer, stress deconcentrates over a long polymer strand between neighbouring crosslinks. The entanglements function as slip links and do not impede stress deconcentration, thus decoupling modulus and fatigue threshold.”

In addition, long, tangled polymer chains are more effective at distributing stress throughout the material compared to the shorter crosslinked chains present in conventional vulcanized rubber. As the stress is spread out more, the chances of the rubber cracking are lower.

Based on the team’s research, the material produced using the newly developed method is 10 times stronger than traditional rubber. It is also four times more resistant to cracks during repeated stretch cycles.

However, this method cannot completely replace the traditional rubber production because it is not a viable option for producing tires and other thick-wall parts. 

Read the full article here to learn more about the new, gentler method of producing rubber.

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