Soy-based, high biorenewable content UV curable coatings

Utilization of biorenewable materials in UV curing coatings technology is a "green + green" solution to sustainable development. In this work, acrylated epoxidized soybean oil based UV curable coating performance was significantly enhanced by incorporating synthesized acrylated sucrose and hyperbranched acrylates. Acrylated sucrose monomers were synthesized using solventless bulk reactions and characterized by mass spectroscopy and infra-red spectroscopy. Synthesized acrylated sucrose comprised of acrylated monomers with varying degree of acrylation, and the degree of acrylation of the acrylated sucrose increased with reaction time. Acrylated sucrose monomers obtained after 6 and 12h reactions were formulated into acrylated soybean oil based UV curable coatings with commercial hyperbranched acrylates to produce biorenewable materials based UV curable coatings. Acrylated sucrose monomers increased the toughness but reduced the water resistivity and thermal stability of the coatings, the toughening effect was explained by the soft and hard micro phase separation in the cured coating films. Hyperbranched acrylates increased the coating hardness, adhesion, modulus, solvent resistance and glass transition temperature. Coating formulations containing both the acrylated sucrose monomers and the hyperbranched acrylates exhibited balanced coating performance with reasonably high biorenewable content. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.