A Titanium-modified phenol-formaldehyde resin (Ti-PF) was prepared. FT-IR was adopted to characterize the molecular structure of the modified resin. And the curing behavior and curing kinetic characteristics were studied by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The initial curing temperature Ti, the exothermic peak temperature Tp and the end curing temperature Td of Ti-PF are 153.1°C, 172.5°C and 193.9°C, respectively, all about 10°C higher than that of the unmodified phenolic resin. The Kissinger and Crane equations were applied to establish the curing kinetic parameters of Ti-PF. The kinetic analysis indicates the activation energy for the Ti-PF is 79.9kJ•mol-1, lower than that of the unmodified phenolic resin(87.6kJ•mol-1). In addition, the thermal degradation behavior of the cured Ti-PF was studied by thermal gravimetric (TG) method. TG results show that the char yield of Ti-PF is 73.3% at 850°C, while that of the unmodified phenolic resin is only 62.3%. It demonstrated that titanium-modified phenolic resin has much better thermal stability compared with the unmodified one.
