Evaluation of curing kinetic parameters of an epoxy/polyaminoamide/nano-glassflake system by non-isothermal differential scanning calorimetry

The curing kinetics of diglycidyl ether of bisphenol-A epoxy resin cured with a polyaminoamide in the absence and presence of nano-glassflakes were studied by means of non-isothermal differential scanning calorimetry experiments at four heating rates. The data were analyzed by different approaches. The experimental data for both neat and nano-glassflakes filled systems are well-represented by an nth-order behavior. The calculated ln(A/s−1), Ea, and n for the neat system and nano-glassflakes filled systems are 9.52, 49.6 kJ mol−1, and 1.00, and 8.98, 47.83 kJ mol−1, and 0.97, respectively. Model-free methods show that the activation energy is roughly constant in both with and without NGF. In all analyses, Ea values of the nano-glassflake filled system are lower than those of the neat epoxy/polyaminoamide throughout the curing reaction, despite lower differences.