Nonisothermal cure of bisphenol epoxy resin with a nonlinear aliphatic polyamine hardener

The amino terminated polypropylenimine dendrimer (DAB‐dendri‐(NH 2 ) 4 ) was employed as a new nonlinear aliphatic curing agent for diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A (DGEBA). Nonisothermal curing reaction kinetics of DGEBA/DAB was investigated with a differential scanning calorimeter (DSC). The apparent reaction activation energy E a is about 56.7 kJ/mol determined using the Kissinger equation, and a two‐parameter ( m , n ) autocatalytic model ([icirc]Sesták–Berggren equation) was confirmed to be able to well simulate the reaction kinetics in the light of the Málek method. In addition, the relation between reaction activation energy E a and curing degree α was obtained by applying model‐free isoconversional analysis with the Kissinger‐Akahira‐Sunose (KAS) method. As α increases, E a reduced quickly from >80 kJ/mol to ≈60 kJ/mol up to a ≈ 15%, then decreased slowly to 55 kJ/mol till a ∼ 75%, and finally dropped to 44 kJ/mol at full conversion. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2011