ABSTRACT
The specic chemistry of epoxy resins involves the existence, in the chemical structure of the raw material, of at least two reactive epoxide groups, besides aliphatic, aromatic, or heteroaromatic moieties (Pascault and Williams 2010). The higher the number of these oxirane cycles, the higher the functionality of the epoxy resin; and consequently, a higher cross-linked structure can be obtained (Kandola and Deli 2014). The easily accessible epoxide groups can undergo self-cross-linking in the presence of a catalyst (Levchik and Weil 2004) or can be cured using effective crosslinkers such as aliphatic (Wan et al. 2012), cycloaliphatic (Hamerton et al. 2014), and aromatic diamines (Braun et al. 2006), acids (Liu et al. 2010), anhydrides (Becker et al. 2001), phenols (Cai and Lin 2005), thiols (Luo et al. 2013), and so on. The curing process represents the nal step of the polymerization, by which the raw material is irreversibly converted into an infusible three-dimensional polymer network. Such polymer networks are covalently linked and once converted into permanent,
14.1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 257 14.2 Flame Retardancy of Epoxy Resins ............................................................. 258 14.3 Dopo-Containing Reactive Flame Retardants ............................................. 259 14.4 Dopo-Containing Additive Flame Retardants ..............................................264
