Kinetics of the Thermal Decomposition Mechanisms of Conducting and Non-conducting epoxy/Al Composites

This article reports a kinetic study of the thermal degradation of insulating/conducting epoxy/Al composites, in order to obtain their mechanistic information. A Comparison of thermo-analytical data obtained from epoxy/Al composites with pure epoxy under non-isothermal conditions, showed that aluminum affects the thermal behavior of epoxy complexly and the produced effect depends on the quantity of aluminum in epoxy. The influence of aluminum contents on the thermal degradation of epoxy was fairly explained on the basis of variations in catalytic activity and heat capacity of aluminum with temperature. Different differential and integral isoconversional methods were used to determine the activation energies and consequently the appropriate reaction model for the processes, which was found to be Sestâk-Berggren. Kinetic modeling satisfactorily simulated the thermal degradation rates of epoxy/Al composites in terms of their kinetic equations and suggested the possibility of weak interactions between epoxy and aluminum. The mechanistic information obtained by kinetic study was found in good agreement with SEM and XRD results.