Isothermal curing kinetics of a flame retardant epoxy resin containing DOPO investigated by DSC and rheology

The isothermal curing kinetics of a flame-retardant epoxy resin containing DOPO (1.5   wt% of phosphorus) with hardener DICY was investigated using differential scanning calorimetry and oscillatory shear rheometry. The glass transition temperature T g increased with conversion α measured by DSC. When the curing temperature is lower than T g ∞ of the completely cured epoxy, the curing kinetics at high α became diffusion-control due to that cured epoxy restricted the diffusion of the reactants to decelerate curing. The modified Kamal model including the diffusion factor described curing conversion rate curves quite well. The curing degree θ was established with relative storage modulus, which was measured by the cyclic frequency sweep, and revealed that the transition from liquid to solid during curing appeared later with a slower rate than that for the conversion change, because the network began to form after formation of branched polymer chains. At the modulus transition time, the epoxy samples cured at different temperatures had the same conversion of 0.409, indicating that above this conversion of reactants the effective network was formed to bear the stress.