Cure kinetics of amine-cured diglycidyl ether of bisphenol- A epoxy blended with poly(ether imide).pdf

Cure kinetics of amine-cured diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A epoxy blended with poly(ether imide) L. Barral*, J. Cano, J. Lo?pez, I. Lo?pez-Bueno, P. Nogueira, A. Torres, C. Ram??rez, M.J. Abad Departamento de F??sica, E.U.P. Ferrol, Universidad de A Corun?a, Avda. 19 de Febrero s/n, 15405 Ferrol, Spain Accepted 23 August 1999 Abstract An epoxy based on the diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A (DGEBA) has been modi?ed with poly(ether imide) (PEI) and cured with 1,3-bisaminomethylcyclohexane (1,3-BAC). The curing kinetics of the neat resin and of a PEI/epoxy blend were analysed and compared by differential scanning calorimetry. The results showed that the PEI has effect on curing reaction, reaching less conversion in this process than for the neat system. The experimental data for both systems showed an autocatalytic behaviour and the phenomenological model of Kamal was proposed to obtain the activation energies for the rate constants. The values of the activation energies for the PEI/epoxy blend system are higher than the values for the neat system. Diffusion control is incorporated to describe the cure in the latter stages predicting the cure kinetics over the whole range of conversion. # 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Blend; Cure kinetics; DSC; Epoxy resin; Poly(ether imide) 1. Introduction Epoxy resins have been used extensively as matrices in ?ber-reinforced composites, which are ?nding increasing use in the industry, since they ful?l the requirements of high modulus and high tempera- ture performance. However, such good properties in an epoxy resin require a high level of crosslinking, which usually results in a brittle behaviour. Toughen- ing epoxy matrices using liquid reactive rubbers has been widely reported in the literature [1]. The best results for rubber toughening have been obtained with difunctional epoxies [2] which have a relatively low crosslink density. In this work, the kinetics of an epoxy system containing a diglycidyl eth