Curing Behavior, Kinetics and Thermal Properties of o-Cresol Formaldehyde Epoxy Resin Modified by Liquid Crystalline Epoxy Resin

Abstract

The curing kinetics of a bi-component system of o-cresol-formaldehyde epoxy resin (o-CFER) modified by liquid crystalline p-phenylene di[4-(2,3-epoxypropyl) benzoate] (p-PEPB), with 4,4-diamino-diphenyl ether (DDE) as a curing agent, was investigated by nonisothermal differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) method. The relationship between apparent activation energy, Ea, and the conversion α was obtained by the isoconversional method of Ozawa. A molecular reaction mechanism is proposed. The results show that the values of Ea in the initial stage are higher and tend to decrease slightly with the reaction progress. The primary amines have a higher Ea than secondary amines. The average curing Ea of o-CFER/p-PEPB/DDE system is 61.64 KJ/mol. These curing reactions can be described by a model proposed by Šesták and Berggren, which includes two parameters of m and n. Parameters such as reaction orders were evaluated using the Šesták-Berggren (S-B) equation and the following kinetic equation: dα/dt = Aexp(−Ea/RT)α m (1 − a) n . The curing behavior of the system was studied by polarized optical microscopy (POM) and torsional braid analysis (TBA). The compatibility of the p-PEPB and o-CFER system is very good. Temperature of mechanical loss peak is higher by 63°C than the common o-CFER epoxy resin, when the weight ratio of p-PEPB with o-CFER is 4:100.