Specialty Amines
Specialty amines, because of their complex
chemical structure, not only act as catalysts but also as crosslinkers, limiting
the drawbacks obtained with the classical catalysts. Moreover, these amines
bring other application advantages like adhesion improvement, polymerisation
kinetic increase... They are a kind of "build in" catalysts contributing to
final characteristics.
Some specialty amines are used in thermosets. Thermosets can
be polyurethane, epoxy, polyester, polyamide or phenolic and are used in many
applications like coatings, adhesives, flooring or composites.
Thermosets are 1 or 2 components systems. Most of the time they contain
a catalyst combined with the crosslinking agent in the B part. This catalyst
is useful to start the polymerisation but leads to some problems on the final
product, like for instance yellowing and mechanical/chemical properties deterioration.
The most interesting one within the specialty amines product range are DMAPAPA,
TMPDA, APDEA and DEAPA.
We decided to focus on DMAPAPA to point out typical differences between multifunctional speciality amines and a typical catalyst.
