Naphthalic anhydride derivatives: Structural effects on their initiating abilities in radical and/or cationic photopolymerizations under visible light

Abstract

ABSTRACTOnly one naphthalic anhydride derivative has been reported as light sensitive photoinitiator, this prompted us to further explore the possibility to prepare a new family of photoinitiators based on this scaffold. Therefore, eight naphthalic Naphthalic anhydride derivatives (ANH1‐ANH8) have been prepared and combined with an iodonium salt (and optionally N‐vinylcarbazole) or an amine (and optionally 2,4,6‐tris(trichloromethyl)‐1,3,5‐triazine) to initiate the cationic polymerization of epoxides and the free radical polymerization of acrylates under different irradiation sources, that is, very soft halogen lamp (∼ 12 mW cm−2), laser diode at 405 nm (∼1.5 mW cm−2) or blue LED centered at 455 nm (80 mW cm−2). The ANH6 based photoinitiating systems are particularly efficient for the cationic and the radical photopolymerizations, and even better than that of the well‐known camphorquinone based systems. The photochemical mechanisms associated with the chemical structure/photopolymerization efficiency relationships are studied by steady state photolysis, fluorescence, cyclic voltammetry, laser flash photolysis, and electron spin resonance spin‐trapping techniques. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2015, 53, 2860–2866