Kinetic studies of the polymerization of an epoxy resin modified with rhodamine B

FERNÁNDEZ R.; FERNÁNDEZ D’ARLAS B.; OYANGUREN P.A; MONDRAGON I

THERMOCHIMICA ACTA

Elsevier

Año: 2009 vol. 493 p. 6 - 13

0040-6031

Novel fluorescent materials were satisfactorily synthesized. With this aim, an epoxy resin based on diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A (DGEBA) was reacted with a laser dye, rhodamine B (RB), to achieve an epoxy-based prepolymer. Then, a diamine, m-xylylenediamine (MXDA), was used as hardener with the purpose of obtaining a crosslinked polymer. The curing conditions strongly influence the intended final properties and the optimization of the curing requires a reliable kinetic model. For that reason, this work presents the kinetic study of the polymerization of the epoxy resin by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) in isothermal mode, as well as, by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). DSC data were fitted using a Kamal autocatalytic equation. Conversion as a function of reaction time curves obtained by means of both techniques agreed well. In addition, the epoxy-based materials synthesized were characterized by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) and their fluorescent properties were also verified.