Studies on Curing Kinetics and Tensile Properties of Silica-Filled Phenolic Amine/Epoxy Resin Nanocomposite.

In this study, the curing kinetics of the phenolic amine/epoxy resin system were investigated by nonisothermal differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The model-free isoconversional method of Ozawa-Flynn-Wall reveals a dependence of Eα (activation energy) on conversion (α), which interprets the autocatalytic curing reaction mechanism of the phenolic amine/epoxy resin system. Studies on the effects of nano-SiO₂ particles on the tensile properties and tensile fracture face morphology of nanocomposites show that the uniform dispersion of SiO₂ nanoparticles plays an important role in promoting the tensile performance of nanocomposites. Additionally, increases of 184.1% and 217.2% were achieved by adding 1.5% weight parts of nano-SiO₂ in composites for the tensile strength and tensile modulus, respectively.