Curing Kinetics of Biobased Epoxies for Tailored Applications

The curing kinetics of a family of biobased epoxies derived from n-alkyl diphenolate esters differing in ester side chain length were compared with diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A (DGEBA). Isothermal isoconversional analysis and Kamal–Sourour model fitting by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) were utilized to obtain reaction constants. The biobased epoxides and DGEBA have reaction orders that are comparable while the autocatalytic rate constant of DGEBA was larger than those of the biobased epoxies. As the n-alkyl side chain length of diphenolate esters increased, the autocatalytic rate constant decreased. Furthermore, the non-autocatalytic rate constant for DGEBA is smaller than that of the biobased epoxies. The cause for the difference in rate constants is discussed, and applications are assigned to the epoxies based on curing kinetics.