The future of visible light photoinitiators of polymerization for photocrosslinking applications

Abstract

Photopolymerization under visible light is an active research field whose intense research activity is supported by the recent advances in 3D and 4D printing. Within this perspective article, emerging trends in visible light photopolymerization for photocrosslinking applications will be presented. Notably, the performant multicomponent photoinitiating systems extensively used in the past are now progressively discarded in favor of mono-component systems easier to handle. The reduction of side-products formed during polymerization, the reduction of oxygen inhibition, the formation of dyes by intermolecular charge transfer interactions or the development of more ecological polymerization processes using sunlight as the irradiation source have recently been the focus of intense research efforts. Furthermore, emerging trends in processes favoring the elongation of the polymer lifetime such as self-healing will be presented and this perspective article aims at presenting the most recent breakthroughs in these attempts. To end, the future vision of visible light photopolymerization for photocrosslinking applications will be discussed.