Curing Kinetics of Nonmetallic Powder/Epoxy Resin Composites

In order to determine appropriate curing conditions of the non-metallic powder (NM) and the epoxy resin system in a paper printed circuit board (PCB), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was used to study the curing processes of epoxy (EP system), non-metallic powder/epoxy resin composites (NM-EP system), and KH-550 treated non-metallic powder/epoxy resin composites (K-NM-EP system). The results show that the addition of PCB non-metallic powders in EP would increase the apparent activation energies (ΔE) of the curing systems, but this did not affect the curing reaction order. From the kinetics calculation, the best initial curing temperature and the post-treatment temperature are 333.15 and 453.15 K respectively for the EP sytem, 353.15 and 423.15 K respectivly for the NM-EP system, and 343.15 and 393.15 K respectively for the K-NM-EP system; and the curing temperature in all cases is 373.15 K.