What is the reason for silicone products turning white when stretched?

With the promotion and application of silicone products in daily life, more and more industries are using silicone as the main material for customized processing of product categories. However, many consumers are troubled by the defects and problems brought by different silicone materials and usage areas. One of the reasons is that the surface of silicone products turns white after stretching. Under what circumstances will the product appear whiter?

It is normal for silicone rubber products to turn white after stretching and twisting, but it may mislead some friends into thinking that turning white is a bad phenomenon. Why does the product turn white? Firstly, the raw material of silicone belongs to semi transparent white mist material, so the whitening of the product after stretching is mainly related to the raw material. Silicone materials are mainly divided into ordinary silicone, gas-phase silicone, medical silicone, and special silicone, and different grades of materials can be seen from stretching.

The main factor causing the product to turn white is that it belongs to precipitated silicone rubber, and the material is mainly precipitated silica. This type of silica is mainly made from industrial water glass obtained by reacting quartz sand and soda ash at high temperatures, and is prepared into a dilute solution with water. After adding the compound precipitate under epoxy conditions, wash, dry, and crush to obtain precipitated silica. So the blurriness of its products is mainly due to the presence of a certain compound in the silicon molecular chain, which causes whitening during stretching.
In addition to precipitated silica gel, there is also gas-phase silica gel, which is more prominent than precipitated silica gel. That is what we often refer to as food grade silicone material. It has higher purity and stronger molecular structure. It is made of silicon tetrachloride and gas fired silica, with a molecular fineness of up to 800-1000 mesh for silicon, while the molecular fineness of ordinary precipitated silica gel is about 400-600 mesh. However, gas-phase silicone does not appear white or foggy when stretched.

So sometimes when we distinguish silicone, we can distinguish whether it belongs to ordinary silicone or food grade silicone. Generally, ordinary silicone gel undergoes fogging during molding and vulcanization by silicone rubber product manufacturers, while gas-phase silicone gel has superior performance, high raw material purity, and no whitening phenomenon during stretching and rebound.