Synergistic effects of amine-modified ammonium polyphosphate on curing behaviors and flame retardation properties of epoxy composites

A flame retardation property of polymer composites is being considered important to minimize the amount of heat release and the smoke production during the combustion. Therefore, this work aims to improve the flame retardation property of epoxy composites using ammonium polyphosphate (APP), one of the intumescent flame retardants (IFRs). However, APP could be migrated to the surface of composite due to the weak compatibility with epoxy resin. To prevent the migration, the surface modification method has taken place using various amines, acting as charring agent. In this study, we select the 4,4′-diaminodiphenylmethane (DDM) as both curing agent and charring agent for the surface modification on the APP, and their epoxy composites were prepared. Interestingly, we observe both the fast curing effect by analyzing the curing behavior of epoxy composite by Friedman method, and significant improvements of the thermal degradation, and flame retardancy of epoxy with adding the amine-modified APP (mAPP). Moreover, the epoxy/mAPP composites showed higher flame retardation properties and formed the compact char structures due to the attached DDM, which acted as an efficient charring agent to promote to form the carbonaceous char structures. Finally, we also found the correlation between the improvements of flame retardation properties, and char structures of epoxy composites by calculating the crosslink density (Mc) using the theory of rubber elasticity.