Materials Science and Engineering

Biography

Biography: Daniela Rusu

Abstract

   Statement of Problem: Epoxy coatings topic is experiencing a continuous renewal and still presents a great potential to produce new advanced functional materials exhibiting self-healing, shape memory or other functional properties such as transparent-to-opaque transitions. Epoxy coatings can be widely formulated by tailoring the epoxy resin/hardener partners upon the performance requirements for the end product. However, these materials exhibit naturally low impact resistance because of their high crosslinking density. The usual approach to toughen epoxy thermosets is to add either elastomers or thermoplastic modifiers, but this is also lowering their overall mechanical performances.

Methodology & Theoretical Orientation: New epoxy-silicone coating formulations are proposed based on diglycidyl ether of bisphenol-A epoxy resin (DGEBA) and 5-amino-1,3,3-trimethylcyclohexanemethanamine (IPDA) as hardener. Several block and grafted copolymers with a silicone part were added to the epoxy matrix or to epoxy-silicone blends, at different silicone contents. Their effect on the morphology and dispersion effectiveness was studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The influence of liquid silicone inclusions on epoxy curing kinetics and on final thermomechanical properties of epoxy-modified networks was investigated using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and dynamic mechanical thermal analysis (DMTA). Thermal stabilities of the new formulations were analyzed by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). Findings: The morphological evolution of epoxy-toughened networks was used to understand and explain the differences in curing kinetics and impact properties of the epoxy-modified networks with different contents of liquid silicone.

Conclusion & Significance: A new strategy for preparing epoxy coatings was presented. Varying the chemical structure of silicone copolymers allows tailoring the morphology and morphological evolution of the silicone inclusions during curing and so, the impact resistance of the epoxy-silicone modified coatings.