Investigation of cure kinetics of epoxy resin/organic montmorillonite system by differential scanning calorimetry

The cure kinetics of the epoxy resin (EP)/organic montmorillonite, with 4-diamino diphenyl methane (DDM) as curing agent, was studied by non-isothermal differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) at four linearly programmed heating rates of 5, 10, 15, and 20 deg/min, and the effects of original montmorillonite (OMMT) on cure kinetics of epoxy resin were investigated. A two parameter (m, n) autocatalytic model was used to describe the cure kinetics of the epoxy resins. The kinetic parameters were calculated with the Malek method and the curves obtained by the Málek method showed a good agreement with experimental data for EP/DDM and EP/DDM/OMMT systems. The results, based on the isoconversional method showed that the activation energy was obvious difference with the addition of OMMT in the early stages of the cure, which indicated that the OMMT have catalytic effect on the epoxy ring-opening.