New developments of photoinitiators are the base for the further extension of the radiation curing technology. Three different approaches are presented: The optimized combination of a bisacylphosphine oxide photoinitiator with a suitable stabilizer package allows the UV curing of clear coatings with an excellent performance in outdoor use. The design of new oxime ester derivatives allowed the introduction of a new tailor‐made photoinitiator for color filter resists applications that considerably improves the color quality of the color filter. A novel photoinitiator class capable of releasing strong amine bases opens new opportunities for expanding radiation curing into resins types that crosslink by base‐catalyzed processes.

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Thiol‐substituted α‐aminoalkylphenone was newly developed as a radical photoinitiator. Introduction of the thiol group drastically improved photosensitivity in an alkaline developable resist formulation composed of a prepolymer and a multifunctional acrylate monomer. The improvement in the photocuring speed was explained by a mechanism based on chain transfer reaction of the thiol group. Time‐resolved electron spin resonance (ESR) spectroscopy indicated that the thiol group attached to the chromophore does not influence the photochemical process to generate primary radicals. The photoinitiation of α‐aminoalkylphenone can be spectrally sensitized by 2,4‐diethylthioxanthone (DETX). However, thiol‐substituted α‐aminoalkylphenone showed smaller spectral sensitization than the corresponding compound without a thiol group. Time resolved laser flash photolysis indicated that the rate constant of the quenching of the triplet state of DETX by thiol‐substituted α‐aminoalkylphenone is twice as large as that by the corresponding one without a thiol group. This suggests that, besides energy transfer from DETX in the excited triplet state to the α‐aminoalkylphenone, the thiol group quenches the excited triplet state of DETX via charge transfer and/or hydrogen transfer, as supported by the ESR analysis using a spin trapping technique, and lowers the efficiency of the spectral sensitization effect. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 43: 1684–1695, 2005

In the conformations, the bulky benzoyl group of the aminoketone shields the amino nitrogen from acidic species present in the composition. By irradiation, the benzoyl part is cleaved and the active tertiary amine base with small substituents is eventually liberated. The investigation using model amines supported the explanation. The compositions used for this study can be utilized in the base-catalyzed imaging applications.

Tetraaminoanthraquinones are found to be a novel electron donor to form intermolecular charge-transfer (CT) complexes with various acceptors. They show electric conductivity of 10−3–20 S cm−1 and are semiconductors.