Effect of Carbon‐Carbon Double Bond Functionality on Properties of UV‐LED Cured Epoxy Soybean Oil Acrylate Films

Over the past few decades, ultraviolet (UV) cured bio-based resins have been widely applied in UV cured. However, most UV cured bio-based resins are plagued by issues such as excessively high viscosity and poor mechanical properties. Epoxy soybean oil acrylate (AESO) is environmentally friendly. A series of AESOs with different contents of carbon-carbon double bonds functionality (from 2.28 to 4.32) were obtained through ring-opening reactions using acrylic acid and Epoxy soybean oil (ESO). The photo curing resins were obtained by mixing AESO with hexanediol diacrylate (HDDA), dicyclopentadieneoxyethyl acrylate (DCPEA), and diphenyl (2,4, 6-trimethylbenzoyl) phosphine oxide (TPO). The resins were rapidly cured under a 395 nm ultraviolet light-emitting diode (UV-LED) light source to form cured films. The cured film from AESO with functionality of 4.32 has good mechanical strength, with a tensile strength of 18.73 MPa and an elongation at break of 13.12%. The performance far exceeds that of the pure AESOcured film reported in the literature. This work provides a highly meaningful solution for the development of solvent-free epoxy soybean oil-based UV-LED cured films.