Investigation of Dynamic Thermo-Mechanical Analysis on Epoxy/Silica Nanocomposites with Flexible Backbone

Diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A (DGEBPA) is one of the most commonly used epoxy resins,which is cured with various types of hardeners such as isophorone diamine (IPDA) [1]. Althoughthe resulted networks have high strength and modulus, their low toughness somewhatrestricts their applications in some industrial fields [2,3]. In this study, our aim was to investigatethe effect of network structure on the thermo-mechanical properties via employing binaryepoxy resins and amine hardeners. One of the resins and hardeners used were chosen based onpolyoxybutylene units, i.e., diglycidyl ether of polyoxybutylene (DGEPOB) and amineterminatedpolyoxybuthylene (APOB). Moreover, to reinforce properties of the resultingepoxies, amine-functionalized silica nanoparticles with 5.0 wt.% were used during the curingprocess of the resin. The epoxy/silica nanocomposites obtained and their neat counterpartswere fully investigated using dynamic mechanical thermal analysis (DMTA), and the resultscompared with each other.