Molecular Engineering of Specialty Thermoset Materials

Abstract

This work seeks to lay the foundation for improved art conservation epoxies by addressing two of the problems which currently limit their use. The first problem with current conservation epoxies is the difficulty of removal post-cure. This can be solved by synthesizing epoxies with thermally re-workable Diels-Alder weak links. The second problem relates to difficulty in identifying epoxy joints in reconstructed artifacts and can be solved by incorporating fluorescent monomers within the epoxy network. The challenge in both of these projects is to ensure that the modified epoxies are still suitable for conservation use.