Curing behavior and structure of a novel nanocomposite from glycerol diglycidyl ether and 3,3-dimethylglutaric anhydride

A novel nanocomposite was synthesized by curing of glycerol diglycidyl ether (GDE) and 3,3-dimethylglutaric anhydride (DGA) in the presence of alumina nanoparticles. Kinetics of GDE/DGA/nano-Al2O3 cure was studied by DSC measurements at dynamic and isothermal states. It was shown that the reaction kinetics could be described well by the Horie model. The advanced isoconversional method developed by Vyazovkin is utilized to describe the curing behavior of the nanocomposite. A technique of predicting isothermal cure time from the sole dependence of Ea on α was then considered and compared to the experimental results. The structure of the nanocomposite was characterized by X-ray diffraction analysis and scanning electron microscopy imaging. The SEM images showed that the nanocomposite has the morphology of homogeneous dispersion of alumina nanoparticles. It was shown by TGA measurements that the incorporation of nano-Al2O3 into GDE/DGA matrix results in thermal resistance improvement.