Research article

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The aim of this work was to study the activity of several nanosized zinc oxides in the crosslinking of carboxylated nitrile elastomer (XNBR). In this article, we discuss the effect of zinc oxide nanoparticles with respect to their specific surface area, particle size and morphology (spheres, whiskers, and snowflakes) on the crosslinking density and mechanical properties of vulcanisates. The morphology of nanoparticles considerably influences the activity of zinc oxide towards carboxylated nitrile rubber. As a crosslinking agent, zinc oxide with snowflake particles seems to be the most active. The application of nanosized zinc oxide allows the amount of ZnO to be reduced by almost 40%, as compared to vulcanisates containing microsized particles. Moreover, vulcanisates crosslinked with zinc oxide nanoparticles exhibit thermoplastic properties that enable this material to be recycled, which is very important from an ecological point of view.