An investigation of epoxy/thermoplastic blends based on addition of a novel copoly(aryl ether nitrile) containing phthalazinone and biphenyl moieties

In this paper, a novel soluble copoly(aryl ether nitrile) containing phthalazinone and biphenyl moieties (PPBEN) was synthesized for the first time to improve the impact resistance of tetraglycidyl 4,4'‐diaminodiphenylmethane epoxy resin cured with 4,4‐diaminodiphenylsulfone. Then a series of blends were prepared via solution blending with different contents of PPBEN. The thermal and mechanical properties and the micromorphology of the cured blends were investigated by differential scanning calorimetry, dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA), parallel plate rheometry, mechanical property tests and SEM analysis, respectively. The results indicated that the incorporation of thermoplastic PPBEN delayed the epoxy curing reaction, and the crosslinking density of epoxies was also reduced. The no‐notch impact strength of the cured blend with 15% PPBEN was up to 16.7 kJ m^?2, higher by about 104% than that of pure epoxy resin without sacrificing the modulus due to a specific sea‐island structure. All the blends showed two‐phase morphology characterized by DMA and SEM. The size of the thermoplastic morphology was only 70?80 nm, much less than that of commonly used thermoplastics, due to the special segment structure of PPBEN. © 2015 Society of Chemical Industry