Influence of Carbon Black Structure and Specific Surface Area on the Mechanical and Dielectric Properties of Filled Rubber Composites

Natural rubber based composites have been prepared using various amounts of two fillers: conventional Corax N220 carbon black or electrically conductive carbon black Printex XE-2B which has a very high specific surface area. The composites have been studied by dynamic mechanical thermal analysis, dielectric thermal analysis and SEM. It has been established that all vulcanizates investigated are in the glass state in the −80∘C to −40∘C interval. The storage modulus increases with the increasing filler content in the −40∘C to +80∘C interval when the vulcanizates are in the highly elastic state. DETA shows that the increase in filler content leads to an increase in the dielectric permittivity (ε′). ε′ also increases with temperature increasing. Higher frequency causes a decrease of ε′ values which becomes more pronounced with the increasing filler content. Obviously, when the content of Printex XE-2B carbon black in the vulcanizates is higher than 7.5 phr, the percolation threshold is reached and the ε′ values increase up to 102–104. The ε′ values for the vulcanizates comprising 20 and 50 phr Corax N220 carbon black are measurable with those for the vulcanizates comprising 5 and 10 phr Printex XE-2B carbon black respectively. The results obtained could be explained by the difference in the structure and specific surface area of the two types of carbon black—Printex XE-2B and Corax N220