Self-photoinitiating water-diluted polyurethane acrylates and their UV-curing kinetics
Scientists have recently prepared novel self-photoinitiating water-diluted polyurethane acrylates. Neutralised amines functioned as the co-photoinitiators.
In order to find a novel solution to eliminate the photolysis residues and migration problems of organic photoinitiators, a new kind of self-photoinitiating oligomers of water-diluted polyurethane acrylate (WPUA) was synthesised.
The UV-curable WPUAs were synthesised with toluene diisocyanate, polyether diols, 2, 2-dimethylol propionic acid, hydroxyl propyl acrylate, pentaerythritol triacrylate, and triethylamine. The UV-curable WPUAs were characterised by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance, gel permeation chromatography, thermogravimetry, differential scanning calorimeter, and UV-Vis spectroscopy, respectively.
Effects of different neutralisers, neutralisation degrees, hydroxyl acrylates, double bond contents, soft and hard segment ratios on UV-curing degrees and properties of UV-cured films were investigated. The real time UV-vis spectra during the UV-curing process were measured. The UV-curing kinetics of WPUA at low concentrations were conformed to be zero order reactions.
UV-cured films had the best performance when triethylamine was used as neutralising agent
The results showed that the UV-cured films had the best performance when triethylamine was used as the neutralising agent, the neutralisation degree was 100%, the initiation molar ratio of -OH and -NCO was 5, and the molar ratio of pentaerythritol triacrylate and 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate was 3:2. A novel self-photoinitiating mechanism with neutralised triethylamine in WPUA was proposed. Thus, the novel self-photoinitiating WPUAs were proved to be effective and sufficient to use in UV-curing coatings.
The study has been published in: Progress in Organic Coatings, Volume 129, April 2019.
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