Curing behavior of epoxy resin/tung oil anhydride exfoliated nanocomposite by differential scanning calorimetry

The nanocomposite of epoxy resin/tung oil anhydride/organic montmorillonite was prepared by casting and curing. The distance of the clay gallery rose and the exfoliated nanocomposite was formed. The exfoliation behaviors of the nanocomposite had been investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD). The curing mechanism and kinetics of epoxy resin with the different amounts of organic montmorillonite were studied using isothermal and dynamic methods by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Some parameters, the activation energy and reaction orders, were calculated by the modified Avrami equation in analysis of the isothermal experiment. The total curing mechanism and kinetics of curing reaction were also analyzed by the Flynn–Wall–Ozawa method. It was noted that the instantaneous activity energy during the curing process could be obtained by the Flynn–Wall–Ozawa method and the trend of the results was in agreement with those obtained from the modified Avrami equation. These results show that the activity energy decreases with the addition of organic montmorillonite. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 92: 3822–3829, 2004