The curing kinetics of a novel liquid crystalline epoxy resin with combining biphenyl and aromatic ester-type mesogenic unit, diglycidyl ether of 4,4'-bis(4hydroxybenzoyloxy)-3,3',5,5'-tetramethyI biphenyl (DGE-BHBTMBP), and the curing agent diaminodiphenylsulfone (DDS) was studied using the advanced isoconvensional method (AICM). DGE-BHBTM13P/DDS curing system was investigated the curing behavior by means of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) during isothermal and nonisothermal processes. Only one exothermal peak appeared in isothermal DSC curves. A variation of the effective activation energy with the extent of conversion was obtained by AICM. Three different curing stages were confirmed. In the initial curing stage, the value of E. is dramatically decreased from similar to 90 to similar to 20 kJ/mol in the conversion region 0-0.2 for the formation of LC phase. In the middle stage, the value of E. keeps about similar to 80 kJ/mol for cooperative effect of reaction mechanism and diffusion control. In the final stage, a significant increase of E. from 84 to 136 kJ/mol could be caused by the mobility of longer polymer chains. (C) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.