Manufacturing Techniques of Rubber Nanocomposites

Nanoparticles have demonstrated completely different properties to their peer microparticles, and upon compounding with polymer matrices, they are very useful reinforcement and functional fillers. This chapter reviews the manufacturing techniques of rubber/clay nanocomposites, with a specific interest on a latex compounding method which was recently developed by the authors' group. This green method dispersed nanoclay in water and then mixed it with rubber latexes, followed by coagulation. Although the clay layers were not completely exfoliated, they uniformly dispersed in the matrixes and created significantly improved mechanical and barrier properties.