Effect of carbon allotropes on foam formation, cure characteristics, mechanical and thermal properties of NRF/carbon composites

Natural rubber composite foam with carbon such as carbon black (CB), carbon synthesized from durian bark (CDB), graphite (GPT), graphene oxide (GO), graphene (GPE) and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) was studied in this work to investigate the relationship between foam formation during decomposition of chemical blowing agent mechanism and crosslink reaction of rubber molecules by sulphur. Natural rubber composite foam with carbon particle was set at 3 parts per hundred of rubber (phr) to observe the effect of carbon allotropes on foam formation with different microstructure and properties of natural rubber composite foam. The balancing of crosslink reaction by sulphur molecules during foam formation by the decomposition of chemical blowing agent affects the different morphology of natural rubber foam/carbon composites leading to the different mechanical and thermal properties. The result showed the fastest cure characteristics of natural rubber foam with 3 phr of graphene (NRF-GPE3) which was completely cure within 6.55 minutes (tc90) measured by moving die rheometer resulting in the smallest bubble diameter among other formulas. Moreover, natural rubber foam with 3 phr of MWCNT (NRF-MWCNT3) had the highest modulus (0.0035 ± 0.0005 N/m2) due to the small bubble size with high bulk density. In addition, natural rubber foam with 3 phr of GPT (NRF-GPT3) had the highest thermal expansion coefficient (282.12 ± 69 ppm/K) due to high amount of gas bubbles inside natural rubber foam matrix and natural rubber foam with 3 phr of GO (NRF-GO3) displayed the lowest thermal conductivity (0.0798 ± 0.0003 W/m.K) which was lower value than natural rubber foam without carbon filler (NRF). This might be caused by the effect of bubble diameter and bulk density as well as the defect on surface of graphene oxide compared to others carbon filler.