Preparation and study on properties of epoxy resin modified by poly(ether sulfone)

Toughened materials containing 15wt% macromolecules weight polyethersulfone (PES) were made with diglycicdyl ether of bisphenol-A resin(E-51) and methyl tetrahydrophthalic anhydride (MeTHPA) curing agent, and mole ratio of anhydride/epoxy group was 1. Fracture behavior of the materials has been investigated. Morphology of materials has been analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results showed that PES and epoxy could form “island structure”, dispersed phase was PES whose dimension was a few micrometers, and formed micro-spherical dispersed in epoxy resin. Mechanical property, heat-resistant property and dielectric property of the cured resins were tested, respectively. It was found that the shearing strength increased 85.7% more than that of the pure epoxy resin, the onset temperature of this system increased about 10 °C, at the same time, and the dielectric constant and the dielectric loss had a low value, when containing 15% PES in the material.