Biobased Multifunctional Ingredients for Manufacturing Tire Tread with High Mechanical Strength and Fuel-Saving Efficiency

Abstract

Energy-saving and environmental sustainability have driven the tire industry to develop high-performance tires especially that feature high energy efficiency and moving towards sustainable materials. Herein, we reported the synthesis of a series of bio-based sulfur-rich copolymers (SPs) through the inverse vulcanization of plant oils and sulfur, a massive byproduct from petroleum industry. These SPs serve as multifunctional ingredients for carbon black (CB)-reinforced rubber composites. Leveraging the reactivity of polysulfide segments towards rubber chain and polycondensed aromatic moieties of CBs as well as the affinity of the functional groups with the oxygenic groups on CB surface, the bio-based SPs act as both reactive plasticizers and interfacial modifiers. Compared to conventional petroleum-based plasticizer, SPs exhibit superior migration resistance and give the resulting composites higher network strength. Meanwhile, incorporation of SPs significantly improves CB dispersion and enhances the interfacial adhesion of SP-based composites, thus leading to high mechanical properties and remarkably decreased hysteresis loss. Especially, the esterified poly(S30-ER70) shows great potential as multifunctional ingredient for the preparation of high performance tires; the poly(S30-ER70)-based tread composite demonstrates a 16.5% reduction in rolling resistance, 10.7% improvement in wet traction performance, and 13.4% increase in aging-resistance, compared to traditional aromatic oil (AO)-based composite. Moreover, the presence of dynamic covalent bond (-S-S-) imparts excellent recyclability to the poly(S30-ER70)-based rubber material.