Microwave curing of CNFs/EPON-862 nanocomposites and their thermal and mechanical properties

A high temperature cure behavior of epoxy resin system with microwave and regular oven heating in the presence and absence of carbon nanofibers (CNFs) has been studied. The EPON-862/EPIKURE W resin was reinforced with 0.1 wt%, 0.2 wt%, 0.3 wt%, and 0.4 wt% of CNFs and cured for 10 min using a 2.45 GHz microwave processing oven. Thermal, mechanical, and microscopic analyses were performed for all sample including 8 h thermally cured and 10 min microwave cured epoxy samples. Microwave cured samples of EPON-862/EPIKURE W/0.3 wt% CNFs, showed an increase of 27.51%, 25.98%, 28.93% and 6.45% in flexural & compression modulus, and strength respectively as compared to the neat EPON-862/EPIKURE W regular oven heating. DSC results were also indicated ∼10–20 °C increase in Tgs for EPON-862/EPIKURE W/0.3 wt% CNFs compared to their neat EPON-862/EPIKURE W counter parts. SEM analyses were indicated an optimum dispersion at 0.3 wt% CNFs in EPON-862/EPIKURE W.