Photo-polymerized materials have greater spatial and temporal control of cure versus thermally or catalytically initiated polymerizations. Photo-polymerizations, however, do not circumvent the inherent shrinkage that occurs during cure and, as a consequence, stress develops either internally or at the interface with the substrate to which these materials are applied. One solution to reduce this effect is to develop heterogeneous networks with distinct phase structure that can compensate for shrinkage, and allow for internal volume expansion within a network. Polymerization induced phase-separation is an elegant approach to achieve such heterogeneity, because it allows tuning of the resulting structures based on the kinetics and thermodynamics of polymerization. This work focuses on adding non-reactive pre-polymer chains (poly- methyl, ethyl and butyl methacrylate) in a homo-polymer bulk matrix composed of triethylene glycol dimethacrylate as a means to induce phase separation. The effect of pre-polymer content on the kinetics and optics of polymerization, thermal stability, and mechanical properties were investigated.

Polymerization induced phase separation in photo-initiated systems

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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