Thermally stimulated current studies on ethylene-propylene rubber with fillers

The effects of polarizing field, polarizing temperature, filler concentration, and surface treatment of filler on the TSC (thermally stimulated current) of filled EPR (ethylene-propylene rubber) are described. The TSC results show that the samples with different fillers yield considerably different TSCs in spite of containing the same EPR polymer. The results suggest that the main peak of the measured TSC of the homemade samples is due to the trapped charge carriers in the regions between the EPR polymer and filler. The fact that the silica-filled sample showed a considerably larger TSC than the zeolite-filled sample can be explained by the difference in the structure of the inorganic filler. The abrupt decrease of the TSC of the silica-filled sample above 17 wt% silica is attributed to the clustering and association of filler. >