Epoxy resins are widely used in various fields due to their excellent thermal, mechanical and chemical properties. In order to improve the mechanical properties of the epoxy composition after curing, various materials are mixed in the epoxy resin. Amo...
Epoxy resins are widely used in various fields due to their excellent thermal, mechanical and chemical properties. In order to improve the mechanical properties of the epoxy composition after curing, various materials are mixed in the epoxy resin. Among the nano materials, CNT is the most widely used. However, CNT has limitations in terms of manufacturing process and manufacturing cost. Therefore, there is a growing interest in naturally occurring HNTs having similar structure to that of CNT. In this study, the thermal and mechanical properties of epoxy compositions containing HNTs treated with two types of silane compounds were investigated. The mechanical properties of silane-treated HNT were measured by using a universal testing machine. The differential scanning calorimeter (DSC), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and thermomechanical analysis (TMA) were used to measure thermal properties. As a result of the above tests, when the HNT was surface-treated with aminosilane, the tensile strength of the epoxy composition containing the HNT was higher than that of the epoxy composition containing epoxy silane treated HNT. The linear thermal expansion coefficients (CTE) obtained from the thermomechanical analysis of the two epoxy compositions for the comparison of dimensional stability showed that the HNT composition treated with aminosilane showed a lower value of CTE than that of epoxy composition including the pristine HNT.