Investigation of In-Situ Polymerization in a Doped Methacrylate Resin

In this work, the in-situ polymerization of UDMA-TEGDMA (urethane-dimethacrylate – triethyleneglycol dimethacrylate) 3:1 polymer mixture was investigated. Our goal was to detect the change in the refractive index of UDMA:TEGDMA 3:1 during blue light-induced polymerization. The methacrylate resin mixture was doped with gold nanorods, and the change in the absorption band of these nanorods was monitored by spectrometer during the polymerization process. As the operation of the spectrometer and the received signal can be disturbed by the blue light lamp, an optical bandpass filter was used. From the collected data we were able to calculate the RI change during the photo-crosslinking and get a better understanding of the kinetics of the material.