In situ near-IR cure monitoring of silane coupling agent/epoxy reactions

Conference · Tue Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1996

OSTI ID:602994

Winter, R; Connell, M; Cross, W; Kellar, J ^[1]

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1. South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, SC (United States)

A novel fiber optic evanescent wave sensing system has been developed to examine the reaction between silane coupling agent adsorbed at silica optical fiber surfaces and an epoxy resin. Aminopropyl-trimethoxysilane ({gamma}-APS) was used as the coupling agent, while EPO-TEK 328, a proprietary, partially fluorinated epoxy resin, was used as the epoxy resin. EPO-TEK 328 was chosen because the fluorination lowers the refractive index sufficiently such that internal reflection of the near-IR light occurs within the silica optical fibers. Thus, evanescent wave sampling can be used to sample the region adjacent the fiber surface. In this work, two concentrations of {gamma}-APS in water will be reported, 5 and 0.5 weight percent. These concentrations were chosen because {gamma}-APS begins to oligomerize in aqueous solution at approximately 0.75 weight % silane. Because both the oligomerized silane molecules and the free silane molecules adsorb to the silica surface, the focus of this paper will be to compare the differences between the reaction of the amino groups of the adsorbed silane and the epoxy groups of the epoxy resin adjacent the surface modified fiber.

• OSTI ID: 602994
• Report Number(s): CONF-961108--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
EPOXIDES
FIBERS
FLUORINATION
MONITORING
OPTICAL FIBERS
PROCESSING
REFLECTION
REFRACTIVE INDEX
SILANES
SILICA