Improvement and future trend of light curing technology

UV curing technology is a new technology of high efficiency, environmental protection, energy saving and high quality facing the 21st century, widely used in coatings, adhesives, inks, photoelectronics and other fields. Since Inmont obtained the first patent of UV-curable ink in 1946 and Bayer developed the first generation of UV-curable wood coatings in Germany in 1968, photocurable coatings have developed rapidly in the world. In recent decades, a large number of new and efficient photoinitiators, resins, monomers and advanced UV light sources have been applied to UV curing, promoting the development of UV curing coatings industry.

Photocuring technology refers to a technology that uses light as energy to decompose photoinitiator to produce active species such as free radicals or ions through illumination. These active species can trigger polymerization of monomers and quickly transform them from liquid to solid polymer. Due to its low energy consumption (1/5 to 1/10 of thermal polymerization), fast speed (a few seconds to tens of seconds to complete the polymerization process), no pollution (no solvent volatilization) and other advantages and is called green technology.

At present, China has become one of the largest applications of photopolymer materials, and its development in this field has attracted international attention. Nowadays, it is very important to develop pollution-free and environment-friendly photopolymerization technology. According to statistics, the world releases about 20 million tons of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere every year, mostly organic solvents in paint. The organic solvent discharged into the atmosphere in the process of coating manufacturing is 2% of the coating production, and the volatile organic solvent is 50% to 80% of the coating quantity in the process of coating use. In order to reduce pollution emissions, UV curable coatings are gradually replacing traditional heat curable coatings and solvent based coatings.

With the continuous progress of light curing technology, its application field will gradually broaden. Early light curing technology was mainly in coatings, because at that time it was not able to solve the problems of light penetration and absorption in colored systems. However, with the development of photoinitiator and the improvement of light source power, photocurable ink technology can gradually adapt to the needs of different ink systems, photocurable ink obtained rapid development. In recent years, the continuous progress of photocuring technology enables it to penetrate into other fields. Due to the progress of basic research, the understanding of the basic mechanism of photocuring is more in-depth, and the change of social environment will also put forward new requirements for photocuring technology, and the photocuring technology has been innovated and developed.