New Phosphine Oxides as High Performance Near- UV Type I Photoinitiators of Radical Polymerization

Carbazole structures are of high interest in photopolymerization due to their enhanced light absorption properties in the near-UV or even visible ranges. Therefore, type I photoinitiators combining the carbazole chromophore to the well-established phosphine-oxides were proposed and studied in this article. The aim of this article was to propose type I photoinitiators that can be more reactive than benchmark phosphine oxides, which are among the more reactive type I photoinitiators for a UV or near-UV light emitting diodes (LED) irradiation. Two molecules were synthesized and their UV-visible light absorption properties as well as the quantum yields of photolysis and photopolymerization performances were measured. Remarkably, the associated absorption was enhanced in the 350–410 nm range compared to benchmark phosphine oxides, and one compound was found to be more reactive in photopolymerization than the commercial photoinitiator TPO-L for an irradiation at 395 nm.