I bought some Plasti Dip to use on my wheels and my daughter formed a very good question. How does rubber become a liquid, shoved in a can, stay in there as a liquid, and then dry as a peelable rubber material once applied to a surface? Not just Plasti Dip, but bed liner sprays and other similar products.
I haven’t found a straightforward answer through Google.
In: Chemistry
Well, Plasti Dip is PVC-based, so it works a lot like PVC solvent cement: there’s a resin component, some plasticizers, and a volatile solvent. In its most solid form, the PVC molecules stick to each other directly, forming a network not unlike a plate of unsauced spaghetti that has been cooked and allowed to sit until the surface has dried: the strands all stick together and form a big, unified mass. Also like spaghetti, adding a lubricant like oil to let the strands slide past each other lets them behave more like a thick liquid. PVC just uses solvents that evaporate in air.
So, when it’s made, it’s plastic. Then they dissolve the plastic in a solvent to let the strands slide apart and make it a liquid. When you expose it to air, the solvent evaporates and the material re-solidifies. The reason it acts like rubber and not plastic has to do, ironically, with the plasticizers: they let the strands move past each other just a little bit, but they aren’t volatile.
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