| Abstract: | Polymers based on epoxies are widely used in the industrial production of materials for different applications. The crosslinking is often done with hardeners like aliphatic or aromatic amines, with dicarboxylic acid anhydride or anionically. The resins containing mineral fillers possess similar thermal mechanical properties. On thermal oxidative ageing, however, the systems behave very differently. An account is given of the thermal mechanical behaviour and of the weight loss on ageing above the glass transition temperature. By using semiempirical molecular orbital calculations we have been able to identify a possible reason for the different thermal oxidative stability of epoxy resins crosslinked with different hardeners. |
