The first edition of this book (1958) described an analytical situation which had existed for a number of years for maintaining quality control on vulcanizates of natural rubber although the situation had recently been disturbed by the introduction of a range of synthetic rubbers which required identification and quantitative estimation. For the former purpose 'wet' chemistry, based on various imperfectly understood organic reactions, was pressed into service. Alongside this was the first introduction of instrumental analysis, using the infrared spectra of either the polymers or, more usually, their pyrolytic products to 'fingerprint' the material. The identification of a range of organic accelerators, antioxidants and their derivatives which had been intro duced during the 1920s and 30s was, in the first edition, dealt with by a combination of column chromatography and infrared spectroscopy or by paper chromatography. Quantitative procedures were, however, still classical in the tradition of gravimetric or volumetric assays with an initially weighed sample yielding, after chemical manipulation, a carefully precipitated, dried and weighed end product, or a solution of known composition whose weight or titre, as a percentage of the initial sample, quantified the function being determined. The second edition of this work (1968) consolidated the newer techni ques which had been introduced in the first without adding to them although, in other applications of analytical chemistry, instrumental analysis had already brought about a transformation in laboratory practice.

This review outlines each technique used in rubber analysis and then illustrates which methods are applied to determine which facts. This d104 is a good introduction to a very complex subject area and will enable the reader to understand the basic concepts of rubber analysis. Around 350 abstracts from the Rapra Polymer Library database accompany this review, to facilitate further reading. These include core original references together with abstracts from some of the latest papers on rubber analysis.

This book has its origin in a proposal made a few years ago that I should collaborate with Dr H. J. Stern in the production of a third edition of his well-known text-book entitled Rubber: Natural and Synthetic. The sugges tion was that I should contribute a series of chapters on synthetic rubbers. Although, in the event, it has not proved possible to publish the full book in the form originally planned, it was apparent that, with some restructuring, the material which I had collected would be valuable as an independent summary of the chemistry and technology of synthetic rubbers. It is in this form that the material is now offered. The primary purpose of this book is to provide a brief up-to-date survey of the principal types of synthetic rubber which have been and are currently available. Two classes of material are included which are regarded by some as being thermoplastics rather than rubbers, namely, plasticised polyvinyl chloride and the thermoplastic synthetic rubbers. The topics which are covered for each main family of synthetic rubbers are (i) the sources of the monomers, (ii) polymerisation procedures and the effects of important polymerisation variables upon the rubber produced, (iii) the types of rubber currently available commercially, (iv) interesting aspects of the compounding of the rubbers, with special reference to such matters as vulcanisation, reinforcement, protection against degradation, and (where appropriate) plasticisation, and (v) an indication of applications.