Congratulations to Nell and Takashi, who are joint first authors on our new publication in ACS Applied Polymer Materials in which we do a deep dive into understanding how the interaction between photoinitators and fluorophores affects the rate of photopolymerisation. This type of reaction has important diverse applications from 3D/4D printing to the design of optical components so we were delighted that our paper was selected as an ACS Editor’s choice due to it’s wide-reaching potential impact.

The study was funded by an EPSRC New Horizons grant and the European Research Council CoG project SPECTRACON.

This is the first in a series of forthcoming publications arising from a fruitful and fun collaboration with Prof Kalai Saravanamuttu and Dr Kathryn Benincasa at McMaster University, Canada. Thanks also to Dr Andrew Prentice for DFT calculations to support our experimental studies.

Interplay of Luminophores and Photoinitiators during Synthesis of Bulk and Patterned Luminescent Photopolymer Blends
Helen Tunstall-García, Takashi Lawson, Kathryn A. Benincasa, Andrew W. Prentice, Kalaichelvi Saravanamuttu, and Rachel C. Evans*
ACS Appl. Polym. Mater. 2024, https://doi.org/10.1021/acsapm.4c00484