A four-armed starlike polyamine with a benzene nucleus (MXBDP) was prepared, characterized, and employed as the novel curing agent for epoxy resin of bisphenol A (DGEBA). Nonisothermal reaction kinetics of DGEBA/MXBDP was systematically investigated using a differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) in terms of a model-fitting Malek approach and a model-free advanced isoconversional method of Vyazovkin (AICM). A two-parameter autocatalytic model of Sestak-Berggren (SB(m, n) model) was substantiated to be able to well describe the nonisothermal reaction rate of DGEBA/MXBDP. In addition, the correlation between effective activation energy E-alpha upon fractional conversion a was determined with the AICM. The result showed E-alpha dropped quickly at the initial stage of the reaction up to alpha approximate to 10%, then showed a relative constant value of approximate to 57 kJ/mol for alpha approximate to 10-35%, and finally decreased again from approximate to 57 to approximate to 45 kJ/mol until the completion, which implicates quite complex mechanisms of the reaction. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.