What is Peroxide?
Peroxides are chemical compounds with weak oxygen-oxygen bonds, making them thermally unstable. Upon heat exposure, they form radical structures that readily bond with other compounds. This property has led to their wide use in various industries.
Peroxide
Peroxides are chemical compounds that have a weak oxygen-oxygen (O-O) bond in their structure. The dissociation energy of O-O covalent bond in peroxides is very low (20-50 kcal/mole) and therefore they have low thermal stability. The weak O-O bond dissociates upon exposure to heat and forms radical structures. These radical structures have a great tendency to bond with other stable chemical compounds. Hence, this property has led peroxides to become a widely used material in various industries.
Applications of peroxides
Hydrogen peroxide and its derivatives are widely used nowadays. They can be used in bleaching and dyeing processes, as components of detergent powders and products, in organic and inorganic synthesis, in canning different products and baking bread, as initiators of polymerization processes, in the construction industry to produce porous concrete, in agriculture as seed growth accelerators and insecticides, in the medical and cosmetic industries, in pyrotechnology, in metal extraction, in the production of semiconductor materials, in etching metal surfaces, in the vulcanization processes of butyl rubber, in diesel fuel as an additive, in various industries as an oxidizing agent, and in the production of silicone and non-silicone rubbers as curing agents.
Application of peroxides in vulcanization of rubber compounds
The process of vulcanization or cross-linking of rubbers can be done by adding a curing agent to the rubber compound, exposing the compound to a special temperature for a specific time duration to generate cross-links between the polymer chains, and curing.
How do peroxides lead to cross-linking the rubber?
The peroxide vulcanization method is a radical process that results in the formation of C-C bonds between polymer chains as cross-links. The peroxide vulcanization process contains three main steps:
- Dissociation of O-O bound in the peroxide generate highly reactive radical structures
- The reaction of radicals to weakly bonded hydrogens creates highly reactive polymer chains
- Creating chemical cross-links between polymer chains
Types of peroxide
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