Synthesis, curing kinetics and thermal properties of novel difunctional chiral and achiral benzoxazines with double chiral centers

Novel difunctional chiral and achiral benzoxazine monomers were synthesized from the reaction of bisphenol A with paraformaldehyde and primary amines, including S-(+)-3-methyl-2-butylamine and rac-(+/-)-3-methyl-2-butylamine, by solventless method. The chemical structures of chiral and achiral benzoxazines were identified by fourier transform infrared, nuclear magnetic resonance (H-1 NMR and C-13 NMR). The curing behavior and non-isothermal curing kinetics of chiral and achiral benzoxazine monomers were investigated by differential scanning calorimeter (DSC). Isoconversional methods based on Friedman and Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose were applied to analyze the curing process of chiral and achiral benzoxazines. The thermal properties of cured polymers were characterized by DSC and thermogravimetry. The results suggested that the optical purity and stereo-configuration for chiral and achiral benzoxazines have definite influence on curing behavior and thermal properties despite the same chemical structure. Chiral benzoxazine displayed typical characteristics of difunctional benzoxazines. Achiral benzoxazine showed distinctly double peaks in DSC exotherms due to the presence of racemic and mesomeric isomers. The thermal properties of achiral polybenzoxazine were slightly higher than those of chiral polybenzoxazine, and were much higher than those of other bisphenol A-C-3-C-8 linear aliphatic amine-based polybenzoxazines because of tight packing, low free volume, and abundant intramolecular and intermolecular hydrogen bonds in network structure of polymers.