Cure Kinetics of Epoxy Resin and Photoactive Aromatic Diamine Reinforced with ZnO Nano Particles

In this work, nanocomposites from nano ZnO particles (NZ), diglycidylether of bisphenol-A based epoxy (DGEBA), and fluorescent aromatic diamine (TFID) as curing agent were obtained from direct blending of these materials and we studied the reaction kinetics of two systems: DGEBA/TFID and DGEBA/TFID/NZ, to calculate kinetic parameters. The effect of ZnO particles as catalyst on the cure reaction of DGEBA/TFID system was studied by the Kissinger and Ozawa equations. The Ea value of curing of DGEBA/TFID/15% NZ system showed a decrease of about 10 kJ/mol indicating the catalytic effect of NZ particles on the cure reaction. The properties of cured epoxy resin thin film, including UV-visible absorption, photoluminescence emission have been investigated.

Keywords:

nanocomposite , epoxy resin , curing