Polymerization behavior of an anisotropic methacrylate monomer under photopolymerization-induced molecular diffusion conditions

Abstract

With designing highly functional polymer films, control of molecular alignment plays an important role to enhance their optical and mechanical properties of polymer films. Of various alignment techniques, a photoalignment method has attracted much attention due to its remote and precisely controllable process. Recently, we have proposed a novel photoalignment method based on molecular diffusion induced by photopolymerization, termed scanning wave photopolymerization. In this study proceeded, we report the specific polymerization behavior due to the molecular diffusion initiated by spatiotemporal photoirradiation. The effect of molecular diffusion on the polymerization behavior is investigated in terms of molecular weight and monomer conversion.