Abstract
The ability of certain alkyl substituted epoxides to accelerate the photoinitiated cationic ring-opening polymerizations of oxetane monomers by substantially reducing or eliminating the induction period altogether has been termed by us “kick-starting.” In this communication, the rates of photopolymerization of several model “kick-started” oxetane systems were quantified and compared with the analogous biscycloaliphatic epoxide monomer, 3,4-epoxycyclohexylmethyl 3′,4′-epoxycyclohexanecarboxylate (ERL). It has been found that the “kick-started” systems undergo photopolymerization at rates that are at least two-fold faster than ERL. These results suggest that “kick-started” oxetanes could replace ERL in many applications in which high speed ultraviolet induced crosslinking photopolymerizations are carried out. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2015, 53, 586–593
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