Abstract
The research described here studied the curing kinetics of pure epoxy (EP), epoxy/phenolic resin (EP/PH) and epoxy/nano-CaCO3 particles (EP/NPs) composites by isothermal differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). A model free technique (isoconversional technique) was used to study the curing reaction kinetics and the results showed that the activation energies (Ea) of the pure EP, EP/PH, and EP/NPs composites remained constant at different conversions. The research showed a decrease of Ea for the EP/NPs system, while there was a small increase of Ea for the EP/PH. This can be attributed to the acceleration effect of the nano-CaCO3 for the EP/NPs system and the low reactivity of PH for the EP/PH system.