LAUSR

A functional material named waterswelling rubber (WSR) is composed mainly of elastomeric and hydrophilic polymer, which has excellent elastic sealing and waterswelling properties.[1] WSR has wide applications for its convenient operation, high efficiency, and longterm water retention, especially in tunnel engineering and underwater engineering.[2,3] The preparation technologies of WSR are divided broadly into two categories: chemical grafting modification and physical blending.[4,5] The latter is the most promising way because of its facile production, desirable product properties, and low cost. Hence, multicomponent mechanical blending would be greatly attractive method to prepare waterswelling rubber. In general, various rubbers such as chlorinated polyethylene,[6] styrenebutadienestyrene block copolymer,[7] and poly(dimethylsiloxane) rubber[8] have blended with waterabsorbent materials like cross-linking poly(sodium acrylate) (CPNaAA),[9,10] poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA),[11] poly(acrylic acid) (PAA),[12] and so on, for enhancing the mechanical and waterswelling properties of WSR. But hydrophilic waterabsorbent resin or polymer nanofiber cannot disperse well in rubber, so that the hydrophilic components can easily break off from rubber networks due to the poor interface between them.[13,14] This will weaken the properties of WSR, such as waterswelling abilities, mechanical properties, water longterm retention, and so on. Therefore, how to improve the miscibility of the waterabsorbent resin and rubber becomes a problem.[15] Received: 11 June 2018 | Revised: 11 October 2018 | Accepted: 15 October 2018 DOI: 10.1002/adv.22149