The out come of these research efforts leads to the concept of ‘Green Tire’ which has partially fulfilled the criteria of a ideal tire. The tread compounds of green tire are commonly based on solution styrene butadiene rubber (S-SBR), butadiene rubber (BR) and high amount of precipitated silica. But silica mixing in rubber is a serious problem, arising from silica agglomeration. Exploration of silane coupling agents in the silica filled green tire have made the possibility to mix silica with rubber. Another way of silica incorporation in rubber is the reinforcement of rubber by in situ sol gel derived silica where TEOS is used as a silica precursor. The difficulties of external mixing of silica with rubber could be overcome by this technique.

The effect of grafting of silane coupling agent on the generation of in situ nano silica before vulcanization reaction is now matter of interest at present. Efforts are given to graft silane-coupling agent on the backbone of rubber prior to vulcanization reaction. The aim of our present study is to find the role of silane functional group, previously attached as a pendant on the EPDM rubber backbone, on the formation of nano- silica by the in situ sol-gel process. Efforts are also being paid to control the size of silica nanoparticle by choosing different reaction conditions and processing parameters.