Role of the controlled fluorinated polymer side chains fabricating via ARGET-ATRP on natural rubber molecular network

Natural rubber, as the renewable and important industrial raw material, is widely used in many fields such as automobiles, construction, and healthcare. Nevertheless, the existence of unsaturated carbon‑carbon double bonds leads to its relatively poor weather resistance. Since the carbon‑fluorine components with high bond energy can endow the fluorinated materials excellent thermal stability, chemical resistance, and ultra-weatherability, an activators regenerated by electron transfer for atom transfer radical polymerization (ARGET-ATRP) was utilized to grow the fluorinated polymethacrylate side chain (PFASC) from the backbone chain of natural rubber, and the influence of PFASC on the network structure of natural rubber was examined in this work. GPC indicated that the molecular weight of PFASC varied linearly with the monomer conversion rate, which proofed that PFASC can be grown in a way of living radical polymerization and the molecular weight of PFASC can be tailored effectively. The results revealed that the entanglement between PFASC and the physical cross-linking originated from the intermolecular hydrogen bonds both contributed to the improvement of the elastic modulus and green strength of the fluorinated natural rubber.