Thermo-physical performance of DGEBA/1,8-NDA/barium carbonate composite for coating applications

The toughening of epoxy resins by incorporating inorganic fillers is of great importance nowadays, due to their wide range of applications. The present work reports the results of the addition of barium carbonate into a polymeric matrix containing diglycidyl ether of bisphenol-A (DGEBA) epoxy resin using 1,8-naphthalene diamine (1,8-NDA) as hardener to produce a novel composite for industrial applications. Cure kinetics of the composite system was investigated by means of differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) in dynamic mode. Kinetics of the reaction was interpreted according to the two isoconversional methods of Kissinger–Akahira–Sunose (KAS) and Flynn–Wall–Ozawa (OFW). Using non-isothermal conditions, average value of the cure reaction activation energy in the propagation step was determined to be 57 and 60.2 kJ/mol for the KAS and OFW models, respectively. DMTA and TGA measurements were used in order to assess the effectiveness of the filler amount (2 Phr) on the final mechanical and thermal properties of the produced composite. The results verified that the thermal stability of the composite could be improved with the incorporation of BaCO3. Microstructural observations from images analysis of SEM micrographs revealed that the barium salt was dispersed into polymer matrix homogeneously.