Curing characteristics of epoxy resin systems that include a biphenyl moiety

Abstract

Abstract The curing characteristics of epoxy resin systems that include a biphenyl moiety were investigated according to the change of curing agents. Their curing kinetics mainly depend on the type of hardener. An autocatalytic kinetic reaction occurs in epoxy resin systems with phenol novolac hardener, regardless of the kinds of epoxy resin and the epoxy resin systems using Xylok and DCPDP (dicyclopentadiene‐type phenol resin) curing agents following an n th‐order kinetic mechanism. The kinetic parameters of all epoxy resin systems were reported in terms of a generalized kinetic equation that considered the diffusion term. The fastest reaction conversion rate among the epoxy resin systems with a phenol novolac curing agent was obtained in the EOCN‐C epoxy resin system, and for systems with Xylok and DCPDP hardeners, the highest reaction rate values were obtained in NC‐3000P and EOCN‐C epoxy resin systems, respectively. The system constants in DiBenedetto's equation of each epoxy resin system with different curing agents were obtained, and their curing characteristics can be interpreted by the curing model using a curing agent as a spacer. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 86: 1942–1952, 2002