A New Strategy to Improve the Toughness of Epoxy Thermosets-By Introducing Poly(ether nitrile ketone)s Containing Phthalazinone Structures

Hongjun Guo; Bing Wang; Xin Fu; Nan Li; Guiyang Li; Guodong Zheng; Zaiyu Wang; Cheng Liu; Yousi Chen; Zhihuan Weng; Shouhai Zhang; Xigao Jian

doi:10.3390/ma16072878

A New Strategy to Improve the Toughness of Epoxy Thermosets-By Introducing Poly(ether nitrile ketone)s Containing Phthalazinone Structures

Materials (Basel). 2023 Apr 4;16(7):2878. doi: 10.3390/ma16072878.

Authors

Hongjun Guo^{1

2

3}, Bing Wang^{1

2

4}, Xin Fu⁵, Nan Li^{1

2}, Guiyang Li³, Guodong Zheng³, Zaiyu Wang⁶, Cheng Liu^{1

2}, Yousi Chen^{1

2}, Zhihuan Weng^{1

2}, Shouhai Zhang^{1

2}, Xigao Jian^{1

2

4}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals, Frontier Science Center for Smart Materials, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China.
² Technology Innovation Center of High Performance Resin Materials, Dalian 116024, China.
³ Aerospace Research Institute of Materials & Processing Technology, Beijing 100076, China.
⁴ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China.
⁵ Wuhan Second Ship Design and Research Institute, Wuhan 430064, China.
⁶ AVIC Jiangxi Hongdu Aviation Industry Group Company Ltd., Nanchang 330024, China.

Abstract

As high brittleness limits the application of all epoxy resins (EP), here, it can be modified by high-performance thermoplastic poly(ether nitrile ketone) containing phthalazinone structures (PPENK). Therefore, the influence of different PPENK contents on the mechanical, thermal, and low-temperature properties of EP was comprehensively investigated in this paper. The binary blend of PPENK/EP exhibited excellent properties due to homogeneous mixing and good interaction. The presence of PPENK significantly improved the mechanical properties of EP, showing 131.0%, 14.2%, and 10.0% increases in impact, tensile, and flexural strength, respectively. Morphological studies revealed that the crack deflection and bridging in PPENK were the main toughening mechanism in the blend systems. In addition, the PPENK/EP blends showed excellent thermal and low-temperature properties (-183 °C). The glass transition temperatures of the PPENK/EP blends were enhanced by approximately 50 °C. The 15 phr of the PPENK/EP blends had a low-temperature flexural strength of up to 230 MPa, which was 46.5% higher than EP. Furthermore, all blends exhibited better thermal stability.

Keywords: PPENK; epoxy resin; low-temperature properties; toughness and strength.

Abstract

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