Novel Dual-Cure Initiating System for Cationic Polymerization of Epoxides

Pyrylium salts are found to be effective initiators for both photochemical and thermal cationic polymerization of epoxy resin. The photopolymerization results show that triphenylpyrylium salt derivatives are the most efficient structures. These compounds also exhibit some thermal reactivity at room temperature in the absence of light. However in such case, the gel time of the resin is quite high. Therefore, to speed up the thermal reaction, nucleophilic compounds are added as coinitiators, these compounds being known to yield a fast decomposition of pyrylium salts. This indeed increases the polymerization of epoxy resin at room temperature, opening the way to the development of quite efficient dual-cure photochemical/thermal initiating system for cationic polymerization.