Development of Wight-saving Phenolic Resins using Cyclic Compounds as Curing Agents

Abstract

Resole is obtained from phenol and formaldehyde under basic conditions and is cured by heating. We try to prepare wight-saving cured resole resins using cyclic phenolic compounds as curing agents. Novel resole resins (R-CR(10)s) were obtained by curing resole with calix[4]resorcinarene (CR(10)), which is a cyclic tetramer consisting of resorcinol backbone and undecanal. The resulting R-CR(10)s showed excellent heat resistance and light-weight properties compared to the Resol resin without curing agents. Furthermore, TR-CR(10), in which CR(10)s were cross-linked by triphenyl methane linkage, was prepared and used as the curing agent for the resole resins. R-TR-CR(10)s were prepared from resole with TR-CR(10) and showed excellent heat resistance and high light-weight properties. It was found that the light-weight properties and the higher heat resistance for cured resole resins could be gotten at the same time by using cyclic phenolic compounds as curing agents.