Reaction mechanism, cure behavior and properties of a multifunctional epoxy resin, TGDDM, with latent curing agent dicyandiamide

The curing mechanism of the TGDDM/DICY system consisted of two main reactions and it experienced two autocatalytic curing processes.

Effect of enzymatically hydrolyzed lignin on the curing characteristics of epoxy resin/polyamine blends

Corn stalk enzymatically hydrolyzed lignin (EHL) was used to modify bisphenol A-type epoxy resin. The curing reaction processes of the epoxy resin/polyamine blends and the lignin/epoxy resin/polyamine blends were studied via isothermal differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and the effect of enzymatically hydrolyzed lignin on the curing reaction of epoxy resin was also analyzed. The results showed that the curing kinetics for two blends were not in full compliance with the autocatalytic curing kinetic model, especially the lignin/epoxy resin/polyamine blends. The apparent activation energy of the epoxy resin/polyamine blends increased with the increased presence of the lignin. The presence of enzymatically hydrolyzed lignin was beneficial to the curing process of epoxy resin/polyamine blends at high temperatures. The addition of the lignin increased the final curing reaction conversion rate, improved the glass transition temperature (Tg) and increased the bending strength for the epoxy resin/polyamine blends. However, the impact strength decreased in this process.

An improved simplified approach for curing kinetics of epoxy resins by nonisothermal differential scanning calorimetry

The curing kinetics of two different types of commercial epoxy resins were investigated by means of nonisothermal differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) in this work. The complex curve of measured heat flow of CYCOM 970 epoxy resin was simplified with the method of resolution of peak. Two typical autocatalytic curing reaction curves were gained and the kinetic parameters of the curing process were demonstrated by combination of those two reactions. The Kissinger method was adopted to obtain the values of the activation energy. The parameters of curing kinetic model were acquired according to the fitting of Kamal model. Isothermal DSC curve of CYCOM 970 epoxy resin obtained using the experimental data shows a good agreement with that theoretically calculated. Then, 603 epoxy resin was investigated by the simplified method and the kinetic parameters were received through the same procedure. The nonisothermal DSC curve tested according to the recommended cure cycle of 603 epoxy resin is also consistent with the calculated results. This improved simplified approach provides an effective method to analyze the curing kinetics of the epoxy resins with complex DSC curves as similar to this study.