Abstract
The design and operation of a single mode, tunable, cylindrical microwave cavity is described. The cavity has been used to monitor the cure reactions of two epoxy-amine resin systems. The cavity operates at a microwave frequency of 2.45 GHz and a typical power in the range 0–8 W. It is fitted with an adjustable shorting plate which allows six different electromagnetic modes to be tuned. The isothermal cure of the resins MY721/DDS and MY721/DDM was monitored using fibre optics coupled with a Perkin Elmer 1600 FT-IR spectrometer operating in the NIR region. This allowed simultaneous, real time monitoring of the intensities of the primary and secondary amine overtone bands, as well as that of the epoxide groups. The temperature of the resins during cure was monitored by a fibre optic thermometer and was kept constant either by adjustment of the incident microwave power or by on-off switching of the microwave field.
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