The structural properties of imidazole cured epoxy-phenol resins

In this work, structural properties of the imidazole cured epoxy-phenol res ins were theoretically simulated by the Monte Carlo (MC) procedure. The pro posed procedure can be extended to any other complicated reaction system. T he structural properties, including the epoxide conversion, the weight aver age molecular weight, the sol-gel fraction, the number average branch point of the sol part, the branch as well as the loop density of the gel part we re discussed. The theoretical results were further verified experimentally by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), sol extraction test, and gel pe rmeation chromatography (GPC). The theoretical results agree with the exper imental data quite well. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved .