Engineering Science and Materials Commons^™

Investigation Of Uv-Led Initiated Photopolymerisation Of Bio-Compatible Hema, Sharon Mcdermott

Doctoral

Ultraviolet (UV) fluorescent lamps are widely used in photopolymerisation processes. However, there a number of disadvantages to these lamps, namely, their intensity varies over time and has to be constantly monitored. This thesis is concerned with the possibility of replacing these lamps with UV Light Emitting Diodes (UV-LEDs). A number of emission characteristics of both the fluorescent lamp and the UV-LEDs were measured and compared to ensure that the optical properties of the UV-LEDs were equivalent to those of the lamps. From this study it was shown that the UV-LEDs have a quicker warm up time and exhibit a more …