Investigation on cure kinetics of epoxy resin containing carbon nanotubes modified with hyper-branched polyester

The cure kinetics of epoxy resin cured by diethyltoluene diamine (D-EP), D-EP/multi-walled carbon nanotube (D-EP/CNT) composites and D-EP/hyper branched polyester functionalized CNTs (D-EP/CNTs-H20) were investigated by non-isothermal differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Results revealed that the presence of CNTs shifted the cure temperature to a lower temperature and accelerated the curing of D-EP, and the addition of CNTs-H20 exhibited a stronger effect in accelerating the cure of D-EP. Activation energies were calculated based on the Kissinger approach and Ozawa approach respectively. Lowered activation energy was observed after the addition of CNTs or CNTs-H20 at low degrees of cure, indicating that the CNTs had a large effect on the curing reaction. The presence of CNTs facilitated the curing reaction, especially the initial epoxyamine reaction. Moreover, CNTs-H20 exhibited better performance. The autocatalytic model was used to describe the cure kinetics phenomena of the studied systems. When CNTs or CNTs-H20 were added, the Sesták–Berggren model still can describe the cure kinetics of the D-EP composites because the results, calculated by the model, agreed with the experimental data well. Moreover, the kinetics parameters as well as the equation describing the cure process were proposed.