Of Poss Modified Epoxy Resin,

Epoxy resins modified by multifunctional polyhedral oligemetric silsesquioxane (POSS) were studied in this paper. There are two different kinds of POSS macromers. Tris(dimethylvinylsilyloxy)-POSS(T-ene POSS) and Triol-POSS(T-ol POSS). T-ene POSS must be epoxidized before curing with the epoxy. The epoxidation reaction of T-ene POSS has been investigated by the IR standard curve method. According to the discussion of reageant usage, reactive time, temperature and the procedure, the proper reactive condition has been got. Moreover, the molecular structure of POSS has been characterized by IR and NMR.With the help of catalyst-(CH2CH3)3N, T-ol POSS was grafted into the epoxy resin chains. But by the results of GPC only one or two hydroxide of T-ol POSS chemically bonded with polymer chains, the net-work can't be formed without the curing agent.This paper presents the investigation of the mechanical and thermal property enhancements in epoxy resins reinforced with multifunctional POSS. The mechanical testing showed that the fracture strength of epoxy/POSS at higher temperature and the thermal dimensional stability were increased with the increasing content of POSS. It is due to the presence of POSS cages, due to their nanoscopic size and their incorporation directly into the polymer chains. But POSS has almost no influence on the glass transition of the resulting composites because the functional groups utilized in this study were less active than neat ones which reduced the cross-link density. Postcuring drove the curing reaction of unreacted epoxy groups of network and at the temperature chosen by this paper the influence of postcuring on neat epoxy was more effective than epoxy/POSS. T-ol POSS grafted into the epoxy network were well dispersed in composites while the aggregation of T-ol POSS were formed at the high POSS content(10wt%) based on the DMA observations.The better curing condition and the choosing of curing agent will be the emphasis of the future study.