Dielectric spectroscopy and calorimetry during postcuring of a linear chain polymer thermoset formed from a diepoxide and cyclohexylamine, and the nature of the products

Year: 1998

Authors: Tombari E., Ferrari C., Salvetti G., Johari G.P.

Autors Affiliation: Ist. di Fisica Atomica e Molecolare, CNR, via del Giardino 7, 56127, Pisa, Italy; Dept. of Mat. Sci. and Engineering, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, Ont. L8S 4L7, Canada

Abstract: The dielectric permittivity and loss spectra of an equimolar liquid mixture of diglycidyl ether of bisphenol-A and cyclohexylamine have been studied during the liquid’s isothermal polymerization or curing in separate experiments at different temperatures and thereafter during the postcuring, both on rate-heating and isothermally. The spectra obtained during the growth of the linear chain polymer during the curing and postcuring show the evolution of an intermediate relaxation process whose position in the frequency plane remains relatively insensitive to the decrease in the configurational entropy during the postcuring, but whose strength increases. Postcuring ceases to occur once the calorimetric glass-liquid transition temperature of 345 K, corresponding to the ultimately formed polymeric state, has been reached. The increase in the number of covalent bonds, n, formed during curing and postcuring decreased the equilibrium dielectric permittivity, epsilon(s), and increased the characteristic relaxation time, tau(0), for all curing and postcuring conditions. For a fixed temperature and n, (d epsilon(s)/dT) and (d tau(0)/dT), as well as the values epsilon(s) and tau(0) of the ultimately formed state of the polymers differ significantly when the thermal history of polymerization differs. The slow dynamics in the glass-liquid transition region were analyzed in terms of the enthalpy relaxation and fictive temperature concepts. The distribution of relaxation times for these dynamics correspond to the stretched exponential parameter of 0.6, which is significantly greater than 0.39 determined for the dielectric alpha-relaxation spectra measured at a temperature 30 K higher. The enthalpy relaxation involves a narrower distribution of intermolecular barriers than dielectric relaxation. The results also show that the recently proposed method for determining the gelation time from the plots of the imaginary component of electrical impedance lacks scientific merit.

Journal/Review: JOURNAL OF POLYMER SCIENCE PART B-POLYMER PHYSICS

Volume: 36 (2)      Pages from: 303  to: 318

KeyWords: Calorimetry; Dielectrics; Linear-chain thermoset; Postcuring

Citations: 19
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