Regular Butyl & Halogenated Butyl Rubber
Butyl rubber offers solutions to all these requirements.
ARLANXEO’s X_Butyl® rubber is also a material of choice for medical and pharmaceutical stoppers due to its purity, impermeability, and good resealing properties.
BUTYL RUBBER FOR A WIDE VARIETY OF APPLICATIONS
Advanced rubber solutions have their place in securing a more sustainable and safe future for the planet. ARLANXEO’s research innovation enables our partners in the tire, medical, adhesives and other sectors to provide end-products meeting stringent quality standards and reduce fuel consumption or preserve valuable medications.
Butyl rubber vulcanizates are highly sought after as a result of their impermeability to air and moisture, high damping of low frequency vibrations, and good resistance to ageing, heat, acids, bases, ozone and other chemicals.
Regular butyl rubber (IIR) is a copolymer of isobutylene and a small fraction of isoprene (0.5 – 2.5 mol%). The isoprene is incorporated into the polymer chain to provide unsaturation which permits the rubber to be vulcanized. Due to the nature of this polymer, butyl rubber adopts a densely packed structure that results in excellent impermeability to gases, one of the defining characteristics of this class of polymer.
IIR is used in a wide variety of applications including tire inner tubes, tire curing envelopes and bladders, adhesives, sealants, tank linings and chewing gum.
IIR rubber can also be halogenated in an aliphatic solvent using chlorine (Cl2) or bromine (Br2) to yield chlorobutyl (CIIR) and bromobutyl (BIIR) rubber, respectively. Halogenation allows co-vulcanization and improved compatibility with other diene rubber types, in addition to improvements in the vulcanization rates, states of cure and reversion resistance. Typical applications for halogenated butyl rubber (XIIR) include tire inner liners, hoses, seals, membranes and is often the choice for medical stopper applications due to its cleanliness and good resealing properties. The X_Butyl® product family comprises a broad range of IIR and XIIR products.
