Synthesizing promising epoxy acrylate prepolymers applied in ultraviolet cured adhesives based on esterification reaction

Ultraviolet (UV) cured adhesives have attracted wide attention and investigation in the fields of health care and electronic components due to their quick curing rate, low energy consumption and solvent pollution. At present, the adhesive systems bearing epoxy acrylate components have prevailed in the field of electronic industry packaging. These systems show some advantages such as low cost, high reliability, excellent mechanical traits and fine solvent resistance. However, the affecting factors of the noumenal esterification reaction to synthesize epoxy acrylate prepolymers have hardly been reported. In order to clarify the affecting factors, in this work, the key pre-polymer components in application of UV cured adhesives were designed and further prepared based on noumenal esterification between epoxy resin and acrylic acid. Three kinds of varied epoxy resins were employed to prepare desired epoxy acrylate pre-polymers. Impacts of reaction temperature, epoxy resin type, catalyst content, catalyst class and raw material feed ratio on noumenal esterification reaction were deeply studied. Some valuable conclusions were achieved. This work might open the door to the large-scale synthesis of promising epoxy acrylate pre-polymers to construct high-performance UV curing adhesives by regulating noumenal esterification.