COMPARATIVE STUDY OF MICROWAVE AND THERMAL CURING OF HIGH TEMPERATURE EPOXY/CARBON NANOTUBES POLYMER NANOCOMPOSITES AND THEIR PROPERTIES

Abstract

The high temperature epoxy resin system was cured using microwave and regular oven heating in the presence and absence of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and their properties are studied. For this study, a high temperature EPON-862 resin is used as matrix and CNTs as reinforcement. The EPON-862-part-A resin is used was reinforced with 0.1 wt.%, 0.2 wt.% and 0.3 wt.% of CNTs using a high-intensity ultrasonic irradiation. The curing agent epicure W (part-B) was mixed with EPON-862 resin using a noncontact mixing method (Thinky, Japan). The reaction mixture was cured using a 2.45 GHz (Sharp BP210) microwave oven for only 10 min instead of 8 h for conventional oven heating (curing schedule is 4 h at 120°C, post curing at 170°C for 4 h). The compression tests were performed for all the sample including thermally cured and microwave-cured neat EPON-862, EPON-862/0.1 wt.% CNTs, EPON-862/0.2 wt.% CNTs and EPON-862/0.3 wt.% CNTs. Microwave-cured samples of EPON-862/0.2 wt.% CNTs showed 28.57% and 5.57% increase in compression modulus and compression strength, respectively, as compared to the neat EPON-826 regular oven heating.