Curing kinetics of arylamine-based polyfunctional benzoxazine resins by dynamic differential scanning calorimetry

In this study, the curing kinetics of polyfunctional benzoxazine resins based on arylamine, i.e. aniline and 3,5-xylidine, designated as BA-a and BA-35x, respectively, were investigated. Non-isothermal differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) at different heating rates is used to determine the kinetic parameters and the kinetic models of the curing processes of the arylamine-based polyfunctional benzoxazine resins were proposed. Kissinger, Ozawa, Friedman, and Flynn-Wall-Ozawa methods were utilized to determine the kinetic parameters of the curing reaction. BA-a resin shows only one dominant autocatalytic curing process with the average activation energy of 81-85 kJ mol(-1), whereas BA-35x exhibits two dominant curing processes signified by the clear split of the curing exotherms. The average activation energies of low-temperature curing (reaction (1)) and high-temperature curing (reaction (2)) were found to be 81-87 and 111-113 kJ mol(-1), respectively. The reaction (1) is found to be autocatalytic in nature, while the reaction (2) exhibits nth-order curing kinetics. In addition, the predicted curves from our kinetic models fit well with the non-isothermal DSC thermogram. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.