Effect of the Steric Hindrance and Branched Substituents on Visible Phenylamine Oxime Ester Photoinitiators: Photopolymerization Kinetics Investigation through Photo-DSC Experiments.

In this work, free radical photopolymerization (FRP) kinetics for series of different phenylamine oxime ester structures (DMA-P, DEA-P, DMA-M, TP-2P, TP-2M and TP-3M) was investigated. Steric hindrance and branched substituents were prepared to realize the corresponding electronic and photopolymerization effects. The photophysical, electrochemical, thermal properties and radical concentration were investigated by UV-visible spectroscopy, cyclic voltammetry (CV), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR). Furthermore, the structure-reactivity relationships were also studied in detail through photo-DSC experiment. We demonstrate that the introduction of alkyl chains and/or numbers of oxime esters affects significantly the photoreactivity. Under the same weight ratio of formulation and irradiated condition, TP-3M containing three oxime esters in its structure and methyl group in the periphery exhibits the highest double-bond conversion efficiency. TP-3M-based formulation also shows a wide operation window under different contents and light intensities. Importantly, the photoreactivity of the TP-3M-based system was found to be better than the commercial photoinitiator (OXE-01) under LED@405 nm at a low concentration. This work could provide some significance to the design of oxime esters with enhanced photoreactivity.