Research on Physical Property Evaluation of Polysilanes for Use of UV-Curing Inks.

Abstract

Polysilanes, which have the backbone of a Si-Si bond, are susceptible to photodegration by UV-irradiation. The resulting silyl radicals exhibit interesting reactivity towards a number of substrates. It is well known that polysilanes photoinitiate the polymerization of alkenes. Herein, we have investigated the application of polysilanes as an initiator of UV-curing inks. The evaluations of the UV-curing inks were examined using the spectroscopic and mechanical property measurements. These results indicated that the addition of polysilanes to UV-curing inks brought improvement of the printing qualities, such as blocking strength of printed matter and the amount of set-off ink. We have shown that polysilanes are potentially useful as a photopolymerization initiator for UV-curing inks.