Grafting α-aminoketone to SMA via highly efficient amide bond and their performances as macrophotoinitiators

Abstract

Water-soluble macrophotoinitiators that can realize a high photoactivity together with low migration in waterborne photopolymerization systems are very necessary. However, the precise, highly efficient preparation of macrophotoinitiators remains a substantial challenge, such as grafting side chains according to stoichiometric ratios. Herein, based on styrene maleic anhydride copolymer (SMA) prepared by photopolymerization, water soluble macrophotoinitiators SMA5k-Ns and SMA13k-Ns series with controllable structure were successfully prepared through the amino bond of α-aminoketone small-molecule photoinitiator with maleic anhydride moieties. All of them exhibited excellent water dispersion properties, and solution photopolymerizations investigation showed they can be used as photoinitiators for radical polymerization with high conversion (up to 95%) in waterborne systems under LED@365–405 nm. Furthermore, the migration stabilities of these photoinitiators in photocured hydrogels were better than those of commercial photoinitiators. High efficiency and low migration make them have great potential applications in food packaging and biological materials.