Specialty Amines

Arkema is a global amines producer located in France. Within the specialty amines portfolio, some 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 containing a catalyst combined with the cross-linking agent in the B part. This catalyst is useful to start on polymerisation but leads to some problems on the final product, like for instance yellowing and mechanical/chemical properties deterioration.

Arkema polyvalent specialty amines, because of their complex chemical structure, not only act as catalyst but also as cross-linkers, 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.

The most interesting product within Arkema's range are DMAPAPA, TMPDA, APDEA and DEAPA. We decided to focus on DMAPAPA to point out typical differences between Arkema multifunctional amines and a typical catalyst.