Curing kinetic of micro and nano composites based on styrenine butadiene rubber contains zinc oxide

In the present study, the effect of particle size in micro and nano scale on curing reaction kinetic of Styrene Butadiene Rubber (SBR)/Zinc oxide (ZnO) composite was investigated using non-isothermal differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) at four heating rate. The experimental results were analyzed by both “model free” and “model fitting” approaches and curing kinetic triplet, i.e., Pre-exponantioal factor [A], activation energy [Ea] and reaction orders [n,m] were determined. The results of Ozawa, Kissinger, Borchard and Daniel modified methods revealed that activation energy and pre-exponantioal factor of the curing reaction of SBR/ZnO decrease in the presence of nano particles. Meanwhile, these results indicated to more decrease in activation energy with increasing of nano-ZnO percent. Similarly, the results of isoconversional method confirmed the activation energy reduction in presesence of ZnO too. This reduction can be attributed to activation properties and catalytic effect of ZnO in presence of a saturation acid by forming a complex that exhibited more efficiency with increasing the surface by decreasing the particle size of zinc oxide. Additionally, a good agreement between experimental data and auto-catalytic model is found for all heating rates and the models can predict the behaviour of curing reaction of this composite