Momentive Silanes

Driving Tire Innovations Ahead

The road to innovation often begins with a simple question: “What if?” What if you could increase fuel economy? What if you could enhance safety? What if there was a better way to manufacture a product?    

Momentive is prepared to explore and answer all these questions – because we’ve asked them ourselves. And when our customers in the tire and rubber industry have asked “What if?”, we’ve answered, with advanced silanes that can help improve tire performance and safety. Our answers have also helped tire manufacturers increase their production efficiency.  

Momentive’s first answers for the tire industry originated over 20 years ago when we invented NXT* silanes for the coupling of silica to rubber in tire compounds. Since then, our NXT silane line has helped our tire and rubber customers’ innovations gain traction and become realities.  

Finding the Right Balance  

The tire industry has long faced the challenge of balancing rolling resistance and wet traction. At the same time, it has also focused to meeting new laws and standards for enhancing fuel economy. Further, tire manufacturers often face high production inefficiencies associated with meeting these new requirements. So, as a trusted partner to the world’s leading tire companies, Momentive set out to advance tire performance and manufacturing.    

In 1998, we introduced the first advanced silanes for tires. Ever since, we have continuously refined and expanded our NXT* silane line to help tires deliver lower rolling resistance while maintaining excellent wet traction. Reduced rolling resistance helps tires use less energy, which saves fuel. Enhanced wet traction helps vehicles stop faster and grip the road better. Momentive’s NXT silanes help tire manufacturers achieve the optimal balance of these two characteristics so they can exceed consumer expectations for fuel economy and safety.  

Our advanced NXT silanes may also help increase tire production throughput. NXT silanes promote better dispersion and also enable reduced compound viscosity for easier processing, mixing, milling and extrusion. These capabilities offer numerous potential benefits including:  

• Fewer steps in the mixing process
• Increased extrusion rates
• Smoother, cleaner tire tread profiles
• Longer shelf lives before re-milling is required      

Ingredients for Success  

Momentive’s award-winning chemists and technicians have secured more than 50 patents and have over 250 years of combined experience in the tire and rubber industry. This history and first-hand experience gives them a unique perspective when developing and fine-tuning formulations, including the following high-quality products they’ve engineered:  

• NXT enables reduced rolling resistance while maintaining wet traction and offers tire manufacturers increased overall production efficiency compared to using standard sulfur silanes. 
• Carbo NXT* silane, which is a powder, gives tire manufacturers an alternative choice – with the same performance and efficiency advantages as NXT – when using a liquid material is not an option.
• NXT LowV* silane can help manufacturers significantly reduce the amount of ethanol released during tire production and can also decrease processing steps, saving manufacturers time and improving efficiency.
• NXT Z* silane, a revolutionary, virtually ethanol-free silane, offers the ability to improve the dynamic and physical properties while enabling easier processing and shelf-stable compounds.   

In paving the way for the future, Momentive strives to create solutions that help our customers produce high-quality products and enhance their manufacturing operations. With NXT silanes, we offer a solution that delivers optimum performance – both in the factory and on the road.    

For More Information  

Watch    

NXT Silane for Silica Tire Performance

Momentive Tire Application Lab

Visit:
 

NXT Silanes Page

Tire and Rubber Industry Page

*NXT, Carbo NXT, NXT LowV and NXT Z are trademarks of Momentive Performance Materials Inc.