Abstract
A mixture of epoxy with liquid nitrile rubber (CTBN, ATBN) was cured under various conditions. Structure development during curing was investigated by light scattering, scanning electron microscopy and torsional braid analysis. High temperature cure above 100°C yielded a spherical domain structure with fairly uniform domain size; the higher cure rate, the smaller was the domain size. High temperature cure using a curing agent with extremely low reactivity yielded a spherical domain structure having a bimodal distribution in domain size. Low temperature cure (at room temperature) yielded a co-continuous two-phase structure. The variation in the two-phase structure of the cured resins was successfully interpreted by a phase separation scheme based on the spinodal decomposition which is induced by the increase of the molecular weight of epoxy in the curing process. The cured resin with co-continuous structure was found to exhibit excellent damping efficiency and high peel strength.
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