A Study of Hydroxyl-Terminated Block Copolyether-Based Binder Curing Kinetics

Abstract

In order to determine the curing reaction model and corresponding parameters of hydroxyl-terminated block copolyether (HTPE) and provide a theoretical reference for its practical application, the non-isothermal differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) method was used to analyze the curing processes of three curing systems with HTPE and N-100 (an aliphatic polyisocyanate curing agent), isophorone diisocyanate (IPDI), and a mixture of N-100 and IPDI as curing agents. The results show that the curing activation energy of N-100 and HTPE was about 69.37 kJ/mol, slightly lower than the curing activation energy of IPDI and HTPE (75.60 kJ/mol), and the curing activation energy of the mixed curing agent and HTPE was 69.79 kJ/mol. The curing process of HTPE conformed to the autocatalytic reaction model. The non-catalytic reaction order (n) of N-100 and HTPE was about 1.2, and the autocatalytic order (m) was about 0.3, both lower than those of IPDI and HTPE. The reaction kinetics parameters of the N-100 and IPDI mixed curing agent with HTPE were close to those of N-100 and HTPE. The verification results indicate a high degree of overlap between the experimental data and the calculated data.