Construction of a Fast‐Curing System for Acrylonitrile‐Butadiene Rubber and Investigation of Its Thermo‐Oxidative Aging Behavior

ABSTRACT

Accelerated vulcanization is a key approach to overcoming a critical bottleneck in NBR, where the strong electron‐withdrawing effect of cyano groups reduces double‐bond reactivity and leads to prolonged vulcanization times. This work uses acrylonitrile‐butadiene latex LZ3305 as the matrix to prepare a series of NBR composites with combined accelerators and antioxidants. We investigate the synergistic formulation of the accelerators zinc diethyldithiocarbamate, zinc dibenzyldithiocarbamate (ZTC), and a self‐made amine antioxidant (ST) via a wet compounding process. Our goal is to develop a specialty fast‐curing NBR that simultaneously possesses storage stability and aging resistance. We use a fast‐curing NBR from LANXESS (NBR3445F) as the reference. Our results show that the NBR/5EZ‐0.8ST composite achieves the highest cure rate index of 0.337 and significantly improved storage stability. After 1 month of storage at room temperature, its Mooney viscosity retention rate reaches 97%, which is an 87% improvement over NBR3445F. SEM images reveal a uniform filler dispersion in the NBR/7EZ‐0.6ST composite, with no visible cracks on the surface after aging. The results demonstrate that the formulation containing antioxidant ST effectively addresses the low efficiency of conventional vulcanization processes through synergistic effects. These findings establish a theoretical basis for developing highly efficient, durable, and fast‐curing NBR.