Adamantane imine as a seminal interfacial mediator toward rubber/carbon black composites with superior energy-saving capability and aging resistance

Carbon black (CB) is an irreplaceable filler in the rubber industry, due to its unparalleled cost performance. Nevertheless, the poor CB dispersion in the rubber matrix significantly compromises the overall performance of the composites, especially in the aspect of hysteresis loss. Herein, a novel adamantyl-based imine (DADI) was synthesized and then adopted as the interfacial mediator of natural rubber/CB composites. As demonstrated, the imine moieties on the DADI skeleton are capable of capturing the macroradicals generated by the scission of rubber chains during compounding, followed by stabilizing inside the adamantyl functionalities. These DADI-capped macroradicals can further transfer to the energy traps on the CB surface through electron cloud sharing, which enables strong interfacial adhesion between rubber matrix and CB and hence improves the dispersion state of CB particles. Consequently, with the incorporation of 1phr DADI, the resulting composite achieves remarkable decreases of approximately 6 °C in heat generation and 21% in energy loss. Besides, the aging resistance of the resulting samples is also considerably improved due to the capability of DADI to wipe out reactive radicals. We envisage that the synthetic DADI has great potential to prepare high-performance tire products in terms of low energy loss and superior aging resistance.