Adhesion and self-adhesion of rubbers, crosslinked by electron beam irradiation

Natural rubber (NR), synthetic polyisoprene rubber (IR) and hydrogenated acrylonitrile butadiene rubber (HNBR) were crosslinked by electron beam irradiation at different doses. The adhesion (at rubber/glass interfaces) and self-adhesion (at rubber/rubber interfaces) energies of uncrosslinked and weakly crosslinked rubbers were measured at contact times ranging from 0.1 s to a few hours by means of a tensile testing machine equipped with a tack-probe test. General relationships between these energies and the average molar mass between crosslinks were established in each case.