UV Curable Coatings

At the heart of our business are the UV curable resins that we develop. These resins, or lacquers, are coated onto a clear base film which is then cured hard by ultraviolet light to create the micro‑embossed structures which refract light. The resins provide high fidelity replication of the master mould and have been used to replicate anything from diffraction gratings of 200nm pitch to optical structures of 250+µm in height.

We formulate the resins in-house and they are manufactured to our exacting specification. Whilst we have a range of general purpose resins, we also develop new formulae for particular applications.

Our coatings are acrylate based and are designed to work on a variety of substrates, the most common being:

Type	Example materials and suppliers
polyethylene terephthalate (PET)	Melinex or Mylar from DuPont Teijin Skyrol from SKC Hostophan from Mitsubishi
polycarbonate (PC)	Lexan from Sabic
acrylic (PMMA)	Plexiglas from Evonik Acrylite from Evonik Cyro (USA)

We have also carried out UV embossing on substrates such as cellulose-triacetate (TAC), biaxially orientated polypropylene (BOPP), and polyurethane (APU and TPU) films.

Our resins can be modified to provide a range of characteristics such as:

good adhesion to the base film
longterm UV stability
good release from a film
different viscosities
high hardness
low shrinkage
Refractive indices between 1.4 and 1.6
flexibility
food safe versions
pigmented
NIR transmission
diffusive containing micro-beads or particles
suitable for cast and cure applications

In addition to these conventional applications, we have supplied resins for:

optically clear adhesive layers
high gloss coatings for ceramics
resins for stereo-lithography (SLA)
jewellery making (similar to UltraDome or Magic-Glos from Lisa Pavelka)