Sulfur vulcanization had found hundreds of applications for his additive. Thus, the science of accelerators and retarders was born. An accelerator speeds up the cure reaction, while a retarder delays it. A typical retarder is cyclohexylthiophthalimide. In the subsequent century chemists developed other accelerators and ultra-accelerators, which are used in the manufacture of most modern rubber goods. Sulfur vulcanization Sulfur vulcanization or sulfur vulcanisation is a chemical process for converting natural rubber or related polymers into more durable materials by heating them with sulfur or other equivalent curatives or accelerators. Sulfur forms cross-links (bridges) between sections of polymer chain which results in
Rubber toughening materials where crazing and yielding are comparable, a bimodal distribution of particle size may be useful for toughening. At fixed rubber concentrations, one can find that an optimal particle size is a function of the entanglement density of the polymer matrix. The neat polymer entanglement densities of PS, SAN, and PMMA are 0.056, 0.093, and 0.127 respectively. As entanglement density increases, the optimum particle size decreases linearly, ranging between 0.1 and 3 micrometers. The effect of particle size on toughening is dependent on the type of test performed. This can be explained because for different test conditions, the failure mechanism