![Sample our Engineering & Technology journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5933/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Engineering-Tech.jpg"})
Abstract
Photo-differential scanning calorimetric (Photo-DSC) technique was used to study the gelation of P-3038 (epoxy acrylate (EA) 75% and tripropyleneglycoldiacrylate (TPGDA) 25%) in the presence of various thioxanthone-based initiators, namely, thioxanthone (TX), 5-thia-naphtacene-12-one (TX-NP), 2-(carboxymethoxy) thioxanthone (TX-OCH2COOH), 2-thioxanthone-thioacetic acid (TX-SCH2COOH), and 2-mercaptothioxanthone (TX-SH). Photopolymerization reactions were performed under identical conditions of temperature, initiator concentration, and UV light intensity. Photo-DSC technique allowed us to monitor the gelation, without disturbing the system mechanically, and to test the universality of the gelation as a function of some kinetic parameters like initiator concentration. During gelation, it was observed that all conversion curves present a good sigmoidal behavior by predicting to employ percolation model. Observations around the glass transition point, t g shows that the gel fraction exponents β obeyed the percolation picture. On the other hand, t g was found to be much higher for the crosslinked networks obtained with TX-OCH2COOH and TX-SCH2COOH initiators than those with the other initiators.