Silicone rubber. It’s the unsung hero in countless products around us – from the soft seal in your coffee machine and the flexible grip on your kitchen tools, to life-saving medical tubing and durable automotive gaskets. But raw silicone is like uncooked dough: pliable, sticky, and lacking its final useful properties. This transformation from a malleable state into the resilient, elastic, heat-resistant material we rely on is called curing (or vulcanization), and the essential catalyst enabling this magic? The curing agent.