Characterization of thermal and curing behaviors of epoxy molding compounds

In this paper, both isothermal and dynamic differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) are employed to characterize the thermal properties of two commercial epoxy molding compounds designated as EMC-A and EMC-B respectively. In dynamic curing, the heat flow of uncured powder samples weighting 10±0.5 mg are measured at the heating rates of 5, 10 and 15 °C /min from room temperature to 220 °C. The isothermal curing tests are performed under the constant temperatures of 130, 140 and 150 °C for 30 min. The experimental results show that compared with EMC-B, EMC-A has smaller average curing reaction enthalpy and activation energy showing a better moldability. The parameters of autocatalytic Kamal equation for these two EMCs are obtained by the isothermal curing tests and the curing kinetic model exhibits good agreement with the experimental data generally.