High Temperature Resistant Thermosetting Resin Materials

This chapter reviews worldwide research and technological developments on thermally resistant thermosetting resins for various high-end uses in the aerospace, automobile and marine industries. It provides a cursory look on commercially available high-temperature resins like bismaleimide, polyimides and cyanate esters resins, including their preparation, properties, criticalities, specific applications in the Defence sector, and their drawbacks. Of the high-temperature resins, phthalonitrile (PN) resins have recently been shown as the most thermally stable thermosetting resins, capable of sustaining temperatures > 400 °C. They meet most of the stringent requirements of Defence, with many additional attributes like flame retardance, high char yield, excellent adhesion properties and ambient temperature shelf life. Further, this chapter covers the work done by DMSRDE in this area of high-temperature resins (phthalonitrile resins) and describes the efforts for synthesizing these resins by molecular tailoring to obtain an optimal combination of flame retardance, and high-temperature resistance for replacing currently used epoxy and phenolic-based systems in aerospace and marine defence systems.