Application and development prospect of photoinitiator

Photoinitiator, also known as photosensitizer or photocuring agent, is a kind of compound that can absorb energy of a certain wavelength in the ultraviolet region (250-420nm) or the visible region (400-800nm) to generate free radicals and cations, thus triggering polymerization of monomers and crosslinking curing.

Light curing technology is a new green technology that came out in the 1960s. Photoinitiator is the key material in the photocuring system, which is formulated with active diluents, oligomers, auxiliaries and other raw materials and then applied to the end user. Although the amount of photoinitiator is small, it plays an important role in the photocuring system.

Compared with traditional solvent-based thermal curing technology, UV light curing technology has many advantages such as fast curing speed, instant film forming, no volatile solvent, small environmental pollution, high safety, low energy consumption, small footprint, compact design, suitable for assembly line operation, low production cost, excellent coating performance and so on. At present, the main downstream applications of photoinitiator are PCB inks, UV coatings and microelectronics industry.

Radiation curing is an advanced surface treatment technology, mainly including light curing (UV) and electron beam curing (EB). Due to the characteristics of energy saving, environmental protection, high efficiency, high quality and so on, radiation curing technology fully meets the requirements of the current low-carbon economy and green economic development, so it has been greatly developed in recent years.

In 2018, the market size of photoinitiator in China reached 2.552 billion yuan, of which photocurable materials accounted for 8%. With the increment of downstream application fields and the replacement of solvent-based and water-based materials by photocuring materials, it is expected that the annual compound growth rate of China's photoinitiator market will reach 20% in the next few years and reach 15.589 billion yuan by 2028.