Best Paper Awards Announced for RadTech 2016 Technical Conference
BETHESDA, MD - RadTech, the non-profit trade association for UV and EB curing technologies, announced the awards for best papers for the upcoming biennial RadTech 2016 Conference, which is taking place May 16-18, 2016 in Chicago.
The Best Student Paper Award is going to Sara Kaalberg of the University of Iowa (co-author: Professor Julie L.P. Jessop) for a paper titled "Combining oxiranes and oxetanes to enhance kinetics and improve physical properties." This paper deals with advances in cationic photopolymerizations, which can result in significant cost savings to users. For example, the addition of oxetane monomers to epoxide formulations dramatically reduces both formulation viscosity and reaction time, as well as enables control of polymer flexibility. These systems could be advantageous in applications such as automotive and aircraft coatings that have large surface areas or complex geometries, microelectronic encapsulation that would benefit from low-viscosity formulations, or protective coatings on rolled substrates that require immediate green strength while final properties are achieved during storage.