High Performance Thermosetting Polyphenylene Adhesives

We propose to develop a new series of thermosetting adhesives containing rigid-rod polyphenylenes for structural materials. The new adhesives will be used as non-outgassing bonding agents for advanced composites and for electronics applications. The purposes of the project are to explore the structure/property relationship, and to provide a new family of high performance thermoset adhesives; Recent development in poly(para-phenylene) synthesis and thermoset chemistry provides an exceptional opportunity and a solid foundation for the proposed project. It is expected that highly crosslinked, amorphous poly(paraphenylene) thermosets will have unusual structures and unique properties. The preliminary results on polyphenylene adhesives showed that these materials have good adhesion not only to many metals but also to carbon fibers and other polymers, such as polyimides. We anticipate the new thermosetting adhesives will have much higher modulus and strength, higher thermal and chemical stability, and lower moisture-uptake, while still maintaining other properties of conventional adhesives such as high processability and good adhesion. The adhesives will be prepared from easily available starting materials using well-developed chemistries. With these superior properties, the novel thermosetting adhesives will find applications in the development of supersonic and hypersonic aircraft and other aerospace vehicles.