Guest Post by Dr. R. Bruce Prime In the previous posts in this series we introduced basic principles of kinetics and the application of DSC to measure cure kinetics. Here we describe how thermogravimetric analysis or TGA can be applied to thermoset cure when the loss of mass is an integral part of the cure chemistry. The most common example is phenolics, where each bond ... [Click to Continue...]

Guest Post by Dr. R. Bruce Prime In Parts 1 - 5 of this series we have described basic kinetic principles, how to measure activation energy E, the role of isothermal DSC in kinetic analyses, and time-temperature superposition kinetics. Each of those may be viewed as a tool in our kinetics tool box. Here we describe how they were all used to solve an actual problem involving a ... [Click to Continue...]

Guest Post by Dr. R. Bruce Prime In previous posts in this series we have described basic kinetic principles, how to measure activation energy E and its constancy or variation with conversion, and the role of isothermal DSC in kinetic analyses. Here we add yet another tool: time-temperature superposition or TTS kinetics. TTS kinetics was introduced in the June 2, 2014 post. ... [Click to Continue...]

Guest Post by Dr. R. Bruce Prime In previous posts we showed how to begin a kinetic study and one means to measure activation energy E. Here we show how DSC may be used to measure the parameters in the rate equations, a and da/dt, that can lead to elucidation of the entire rate equation, including another means to measure E. Because DSC gives a direct measure of both the ... [Click to Continue...]