Synthesis of epoxy acrylate pre-polymers for radiation curing

초록

The goal of this study was to synthesize epoxy acrylate monomers and evaluate these materials for UV and electron-beam curing. An epoxy acrylate resin for UV curing consists of a reactive oligomer, reactive monomer diluents, and a photo-initiator. The physical properties of the cured polymer are mainly determined by the reactive oligomer. The reactive monomer diluents play very important roles not only in modifying the physical properties of the reactant resin, but also improving the processability by decreasing the viscosity. A bisphenol-A type epoxy acrylate and a reactive diluent of glycidyl methacrylate (GMA-MAA)/acrylate (GMA-AA) were synthesized and the structures were confirmed by 1H-NMR and FT-IR analyses. It was found that the viscosity of epoxy acrylate/GMA-AA mixture could be controlled during the synthetic procedure. The radiation curing effect for the electron beam as well as UV was studied comparatively. Also, the reactive diluent with mono-functional group lowers the modulus of elasticity of UV curable epoxy acrylate, while multi-functional reactive diluent increases the modulus of elasticity as well as curing rate.