Kinetic Study and New Applications of UV Radiation Curing

Abstract Highly crosslinked polymers can be readily synthesized by photoinitiated polymerization of multifunctional monomers or functionalized polymers. The reaction can be followed in situ by real‐time infrared (RT‐IR) spectroscopy, a technique that records conversion versus time curves in photosensitive resins undergoing ultrafast polymerization upon UV exposure. For acrylate‐based resins, UV‐curing proceeds with long kinetic chains (7700 mol/radical) in spite of the high initiation rate. RT‐IR spectroscopy proved very valuable in assessing the influence of various parameters, such as initiation efficiency, chemical structure of the telechelic oligomer, light intensity, inhibitory effect of oxygen, on…