Preparation and thermal properties of novel organic/inorganic network hybrid materials containing silicon and phosphate

A novel phosphorus and silicon containing compound (KHPDH) has been synthesized by allowing phenyl dichlorophosphate to react with 3-triethoxysilylpropylamine and 2-hydroxyethyl acrylate (HEA). Through the sol-gel and UV-curing processes, KHPDH was incorporated into the structures of the epoxy acrylate, resulting in the formation of solid crosslinked organic/inorganic homogeneous hybrids. The solid Si-29 NMR and DSC results demonstrate that the morphology of the mixed epoxy systems is homogeneous. The application of KHPDH as a flame retardant in epoxy acrylate not only gains satisfied flame retardancy, but also improves the hardness of epoxy acrylate. Moreover, the thermal properties of the hybrids were investigated by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and the thermal degradation of the materials was investigated by real time fourier transform infrared spectra (RTIR) and thermogravimetric analysis/infrared spectrometry (TG-IR). X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used to explore chemical components as well as the morphologies of the residual char. It was found that the silicon migrated to the surface and formed protective silicon carbide layer.