(5-ethyl-1,3-dioxane-5-yl)methyl acrylate (i.e. cyclic trimethylolpropane formal acrylate, CTFA) is widely utilized in photopolymer 3D printing resin formulations (i.e. vat photopolymerization, VPP), mainly for its near room temperature glass transition temperature, good extensibility, and good stiffness. The stiffness of polymerized CTFA (PCTFA) reduces failures due to deformation during the print process and its extensibility brings toughness to otherwise brittle VPP 3D printed parts. It is hypothesized that these properties arise from its sidechain dioxane ring, which may give a low activation volume for yielding using the Eyring model. However, there have been few fundamental measurements of PCTFA homopolymer to easily test this hypothesis. In this work, CTFA was polymerized via reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization. Characterization of the polymerization reaction and intrinsic viscosity measurements of dilute PCTFA solutions to determine the Mark-Houwink parameters for universal calibration in gel permeation chromatography measurements will be presented. In addition, efforts to characterize the viscoelastic properties and copolymerize CTFA will be discussed.

Synthesis and characterization of poly(cyclic trimethylolpropane formal acrylate) (PCTFA): A common material in VPP 3D printing

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