Coumarin Ketoxime Ester with Electron-Donating Substituents as Photoinitiators and Photosensitizers for Photopolymerization upon UV-Vis LED Irradiation

High-performance photoinitiators (PIs) are essential for ultraviolet–visible (UV-Vis) light emitting diode (LED) photopolymerization. In this study, a series of coumarin ketoxime esters (COXEs) with electron-donating substituents (tert-butyl, methoxy, dimethylamino and methylthio) were synthesized to study the structure/reactivity/efficiency relationships for substituents for the photoinitiation performance of PIs. The introduction of heteroatom electron-donating substituents leads to a redshift in the COXE absorption of more than 60 nm, which matches the UV-Vis LED emission spectra. The PIs also show acceptable thermal stability via differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA). The results from real-time Fourier transform infrared (RT-FTIR) measurements indicate that COXEs show an excellent photoinitiation efficiency for free radical polymerization under UV-Vis LED irradiation (365–450 nm); in particular, the conversion efficiency for tri-(propylene glycol) diacrylate (TPGDA) polymerization initiated by COXE-O and COXE-S (4.8 × 10⁻⁵ mol·g⁻¹) in 3 s can reach more than 85% under UV-LED irradiation (365, 385 nm). Moreover, the photosensitization of COXEs in the iodonium hexafluorophosphate (Iod-PF₆) and hexaarylbiimidazole/N-phenylglycine (BCIM/NPG) systems was investigated via RT-FTIR. As a coinitiator, COXEs show excellent performance in dry film photoresist (DFR) photolithography. This excellent performance of COXEs demonstrates great potential for UV-curing and photoresist applications, providing a new idea for the design of PIs.