The presence of different functional groups of the NR-g-
PMMA and E(NR-g-PMMA) can be seen from their FT-IR
spectra, as shown in Fig. 1, as compared to that of NR.
The characteristic peaks of the isoprene units can be
observed at wave numbers of 1663 and 835 cm1, assigned
to C@C stretching and @CAH out of plane deformation,
respectively. The graft copolymer demonstrates absorption
peaks at wave numbers of 1732 and 1140 cm1 which indicate
the presence of C@O and CAO, respectively. The presence
of CAO in the modified polymer also introduces the
double bound weak peak in the region of 800–700 cm1
due to its symmetric deformation. This peak is appeared
together with the strong peak of CAO stretch at
1140 cm1. After epoxidation, E(NR-g-PMMA) displays
additional peaks at a wave numbers of 870 cm1, which
can be attributed to epoxide asymmetric stretching. A
higher epoxide contents on the epoxidized graft copolymer
structure results in the stronger characteristic absorption
peaks of the epoxide ring, as shown in Fig. 2.