Study of reaction kinetics of epoxy and a nickel(II) complex using dynamic DSC technique

The curing reaction kinetics of an epoxy based on the diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A (DGEBA) with an inorganic complex based on nickel(II) chelate with ethyl-enediamine (en) as a ligand were studied using DSC in dynamic mode. The complex curing agent was synthesized and characterized by the elemental analysis, FT-IR, and ICP-Plasma techniques. Thermal dissociation behavior of curing agent was also studied using thermogravimetric (TG) analysis in isolated form. Three kinetic models, Kissinger, Ozawa-Flynn-Wall, and Expanded Freeman-Carrole, were used to determine the kinetic parameters. The effect of hardener concentration on the kinetic parameters and the shape of DSC thermograms of the DGEBA/Ni(en)(3)Br-2 system were investigated. Finally, the previous proposed mechanism by another researcher was used to explain the DSC data in detail. (c) 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 97: 265-271, 2005.