What is chloroprene rubber?

 

Rubber is a product almost everyone has heard about: it is obtained from a white, sticky liquid tapped from rubber trees and lianas, and is also known colloquially as latex. This “rubber milk” which contains rubber particles in a finely dispersed form and is “clotted” so that natural rubber can be obtained through drying – like cheese from cow’s or goat’s milk. This natural rubber, previously obtained from the rain forests of Brazil and today mainly from large plantations in South Asia, is then shipped in large bales to rubber factories in industrial countries.
 
But what is chloroprene? Chloroprene is the primary product for the production of synthetic rubber. Natural rubber and all synthetic rubbers comprise molecules with long chains. In chemistry, these are called polymers. Polymers are divided into thermoplastics, thermosets and elastomers and can have completely different physical properties.

 

The chloroprene rubber produced by LANXESS belongs to the elastomers group, the starting products for vulcanized or finished rubber. Vulcanization is a chemical process that causes the long molecule chains to become bound together, but only at some points so that a wide-meshed, well-spaced network is formed. This is why vulcanized rubber is very elastic and can change form under tensile and compressive stress, returning afterwards to its original form.