2018 Volume 54 Issue 12 Pages 451-458
Phenolic resins are widely used thermosetting plastics in a variety of industries including the aerospace,automotive, housing, and semiconductor industries. This is because of their excellent properties such ashigh mechanical strength, thermal stability, insulating properties, and solvent resistance that are derivedfrom their highly crosslinked structures. Crosslinked structure and inhomogeneity in cured thermosettingresins are recognized as a key factor in controlling the material properties of thermosetting resins. However,the understanding of the relationship between the structure and physical properties has not been unveiledbecause of its insolubility and infusibility. Recently, we are tackling this problem by using state-of-arttechniques, such as high brilliant small-angle X-ray scattering（ SPring-8）, neutron scattering（ JRR-3 andJ-PARC）, and a large-scale molecular dynamics（ MD） simulation（ K Computer）, and so on. This articleoverviews the recent development of the research on the phenolic resins. The structural evolution of phenolicresin during polymerization/crosslinking reactions, the fractal structure, and inhomogeneities of phenolicresins are discussed based on real experiments together with modeled（ virtual） phenolic resins created in acomputer by MD simulations.
