In the present work, size of silica nanoparticles in filler nanomatrix structure was controlled by graft-copolymerization of vinyltriethoxysilane (VTES) onto deproteinized natural rubber (NR) after NR was grafted with styrene to prepare NR-g-Sty-g-VTES. The structure of NR-g-Sty-g-VTES was characterized by FT-IR and NMR spectroscopy. It was demonstrated that the silica nanoparticles and polystyrene (PS) were successfully formed in natural rubber. The morphology of silica nanoparticle in the samples were observed with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). It was observed that very small silica nanoparticles, about 60 nm, were generated in NR-g-Sty-g-VTES. The tensile strength of NR-g-Sty-g-VTES was found increasing 7 times, that is from 3 MPa for NR to 20 MPa for NR-g-Sty-VTES. Storage modulus and loss modulus for NR-g-Sty-g-VTES were found remarkably increasing 20 and 25 times as those for NR, respectively. The formation of well-controlled silica nanoparticle nanomatrix was proved to bring about the superior properties for NR materials.

在目前的工作中，在将苯乙烯接枝NR以制备NR-g-Sty-g-VTES之后，通过将乙烯基三乙氧基硅烷（VTES）接枝共聚到脱蛋白天然橡胶（NR）上来控制填料纳米基体结构中二氧化硅纳米粒子的尺寸。NR-g-Sty-g-VTES的结构通过FT-IR和NMR光谱表征。证明了在天然橡胶中成功形成了二氧化硅纳米颗粒和聚苯乙烯（PS）。用扫描电子显微镜（SEM）和透射电子显微镜（TEM）观察样品中二氧化硅纳米颗粒的形态。观察到在NR-g-Sty-g-VTES中产生了非常小的二氧化硅纳米颗粒，约60nm。发现NR-g-Sty-g-VTES的抗张强度提高了7倍，即从NR的3 MPa增加到NR-g-Sty-VTES的20 MPa。发现NR-g-Sty-g-VTES的储能模量和损耗模量分别比NR显着增加20倍和25倍。事实证明，形成良好控制的二氧化硅纳米颗粒纳米基质可为NR材料带来优异的性能。