UV curing kinetics and mechanism of a highly branched polycarbosilane

The UV curing process in both air and nitrogen atmosphere for the highly branched polycarbosilane system was investigated by differential scanning photo calorimeter. The UV cured products were characterized by Fourier‐transform infrared spectrometry (FTIR). By comparison with the FTIR results of the uncured liquid mixture and the cured samples, the possible cross‐linking reactions were determined. The kinetics of the curing systems was studied. The rate constant k was calculated based on the experimental results. The activation energies in different curing conditions were obtained. According to these results, it was learned that the mechanism for the UV curing in nitrogen was controlled by the photolysis of photoinitiator. Comparably, the UV curing process in air was complicated. It was affected by not only the photolysis of photoinitiator, but also oxygen and tripropane glycol diacrylate. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.