Polymerizable Oxime Esters: An Efficient Photoinitiator with Low Migration Ability for 3D Printing to Fabricate Luminescent Devices

The development of novel visible light photoinitiators (PIs) with low mobility for 3D printing will open up new applications for photopolymerization. In this work, a polymerizable visible light PI DCCA containing an oxime acryloyl ester structure was designed and synthesized. Its linear absorption has a maximum in the visible region (400–480 nm), overlapping well with the emission spectra of conventional blue light sources, and it can effectively induce acrylate polymerization under irradiation with a 450 nm LED lamp. In addition, migration of DCCA in the 3D printed samples is very low compared with DCCB, which has a similar structure but a phenyl moiety instead of the copolymerizable acrylate as the oxime ester group. The utility of DCCA in 3D printing was demonstrated by printing a 3D object with challenging geometric features with high resolution and accuracy. An efficient oxime ester photoinitiator with low migration can be used to fabricate a luminescent object with high resolution and accuracy using a digital light processing (DLP) 3D printer.