Design of New Amines of Low Toxicity for Efficient Free Radical Polymerization under Air

Two new amines are proposed here as a new class of high performance coinitiators for camphorquinone (CQ)-based systems for mild polymerizations of methacrylates under blue light irradiation (LED@477 nm). These new compounds are very interesting because they are much less toxic than commonly used amines such as ethyl 4-(dimethylamino) benzoate or 4-(dimethylamino) benzonitrile. The particularity of one of these two new amines is its dual role: it is a coinitiator and contains a copolymerizable group. Therefore, it is much less subject to migration or leaching, which is a major current issue of polymers. Excellent polymerization performances in the presence of CQ for the free radical polymerization of methacrylates under blue light irradiation and under air are observed. Remarkably, good bleaching properties are obtained after polymerization.