An acrylate functionalized thioxanthone based one-component polymerizable visible light photoinitiator, 4-((methyl(9-oxo-9H-thioxanthen-2-yl)amino)methyl)phenyl acrylate (TX-PA) has been designed and synthesized and its structure has been confirmed by 1H NMR, 13C NMR and MS. TX-PA could successfully initiate photopolymerization of 1,6-hexanedioldiacrylate (HDDA), trihydroxymethylpropyl triacrylate (TMPTA) and pentaerythritol triacrylate (PETA) under xenon light exposure (λ > 400 nm) both in the presence and absence of N-methyldiethanolamine (MDEA). The synergistic effect of the acryloxy group and tertiary amine in the thioxanthone molecule helps TX-PA exhibit a higher photopolymerization activity and better migration stability than that of 2-(benzyl(methyl)amino)-9H-thioxanthen-9-one (TX-B). The results demonstrate that TX-PA is an effective one-component polymerizable visible light photoinitiator for free radical polymerization with excellent migration stability, which has great potential to be widely used in the food packing or biomedical fields.

•Synthesis and characterization of a graft side-chain liquid crystalline polysiloxane.•Higher density mesogenic units and no residual Si–H in the graft side-chain liquid crystalline polysiloxane.•Wider mesophase temperature range than its mesogenic monomer.A graft side-chain crystalline polymer PI with polysiloxane as backbone and a liquid crystal polymer, poly{6-(4′-octyloxyphenyl-4″-benzoyl)hexyl acrylate}, as side chain has been synthesized via atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) technique. Attaching mesogenic polymers to the polysiloxane main chain through ATRP technique brings about the high density of mesogenic units and avoids the subsequent crosslinking reaction by the residual Si–H in the traditional hydrosilylation. The properties of the graft liquid crystal polymer PI was studied in detail by TGA, DSC, POM and XRD. Thermal analysis shows that the polymer PI has wider mesophase temperature ranges with a high thermal stability in comparison to its mesogenic monomer.A graft side-chain crystalline polysiloxane PI with a liquid crystal polymer, poly{6-(4′-octyloxyphenyl-4″-benzoyl)hexyl acrylate}, as side chain has been prepared via atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) technique increases the mesogenic density and avoids the subsequent crosslinking reaction by the residual Si–H in the traditional hydrosilylation.

•The synthetic procedure for waterborne polyether modified polysilane is very simple.•The waterborne polysilane has very good solubility in water.•The prepared water-soluble polysilane has a very good radical photoinitiating property.Developing water-soluble or waterborne polysilane photoinitiators meets the demands for environmental friendly photopolymerization applications. By employing this photoinitiated strategy, a waterborne polysilane photoinitiator polysilane-co-poly(polyethyleneglycol acrylate) was prepared by an efficient photodecomposition of polymethylphenylsilane in the presence of acrylate functionalized polyethyleneglycol. The prepared polymer was characterized by 1H NMR, 13C NMR, 29Si NMR, FT-IR, UV–vis GPC, DSC and TGA. It could disperse in water easily and form micelle. The average micelle size (10 mg/mL) was measured to be 46 nm by dynamic light scatting technique. The course of photopolymerization of acrylamide in deuterated water initiated by it was investigated by the real-time FT-IR spectroscopy. The photopolymerization kinetic data revealed that the conversion of acrylamide reached 80% and 100% after 40 and 110 s irradiation, respectively. The photopolymerization of the water solution of acrylamide, hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA) and acrylic acid (AA) initiated by this polymer at air atmosphere provided successfully polymeric jelly materials in high yields.A waterborne polysilane photoinitiator has been prepared by a facile procedure and has been successfully photoinitiated polymerization of a variety of vinyl monomers in water with high yields.

Three new amino-thioxanthone photoinitiators (PIs) with different substituents on nitrogen, including 2-allyl(methyl)amino-9H-thioxanthen-9-one (PI-1), 2-benzyl(methyl)amino-9H-thioxanthen-9-one (PI-2) and 2-butyl(methyl)amino-9H-thioxanthen-9-one (PI-3) were synthesized and characterized. They showed high molar extinction coefficients and very broad absorption range in the visible region. Among them, PI-2 showed the best visible light photoinitiating properties evidenced by the fact that it successfully initiated polymerization of 1,6-hexanedioldiacrylate (HDDA) under xenon light exposure (28 mW cm−2) both in the presence and absence of N,N-dimethylaniline (DMA) for 0.5 h with 92% and 52% conversion, respectively. For TMPTA, the conversion of PI-2 and PI-2/N-methyldiethanolamine (MDEA) systems is 32% and 62% under xenon lamp exposure for 10 min. The photoinitiation mechanisms were analysed through EPR, fluorescence spectra and visible light photolysis experiments.

A high refractive index alkoxysilane \( \left( {{\text{n}}_{\text{D}}^{ 2 5} = 1.512} \right) \), N-3-(trimethoxysilylpropyl)-phthalimide, was successfully synthesized by the substitution reaction of phthalimide potassium and γ-chloropropyltrimethoxysilane and characterized by GC, FT-IR, 1H-NMR and 13C-NMR. MT siloxane oligomers, which represent a broad range of hydrolytic condensation products of monofunctionalsilane (M) and trifunctionalsilane (T), were prepared by the reaction of the N-3-(trimethoxysilylpropyl)-phthalimide with hexamethyldisiloxane (MM) or divinyltetramethyldisiloxane (MViMVi) in the presence of HCl. The prepared MT siloxane oligomers were also characterized by 1H-NMR, 13C-NMR, FT-IR and GPC. All the obtained colorless and transparent oligomers have higher refractive indexes, which can be adjusted to as high as 1.547 by simply varying the ratio of M and T units in the oligomers such as for the MViTR siloxane oligomer.

In this paper, a facile route was designed to prepare four new NLO polyaryleneethynylenes, which were constructed by two different chromophore moieties with the regular AB structure, to achieve a high NLO coefficient according to our recent work on “isolation chromophores”. Meanwhile, normal aromatic rings or perfluoroaromatic rings were also introduced as isolation groups to investigate the aromatic/perfluoroaromatic (Ar–ArF) self-assembly effect in these NLO polymers. Thanks to the helpful self-assembly effect, the NLO effect and stability of P2, with perfluorophenyl groups as isolation groups, were improved to a large degree, in comparison with its analog P1 containing normal phenyl groups as isolation groups.