Photocuring Pathway Taxonomy for Vat Photopolymerisation: Active Species, Network-Formation Modes, Spatial Gating and Qualification Boundaries
Segurola, Juan
2026-08-27 · Report · Version 0.3
Vat photopolymerisation is often organised using single labels such as radical, cationic, dual cure, vitrimer, phase-separating or volumetric. These labels describe different parts of the material-process chain and are therefore not mutually exclusive. Radical and cationic identify active-species families; thiol-ene, ring opening and Michael addition identify network-forming transformations; dual cure and dual wavelength identify sequence or stimulus architecture; xolography and two-photon absorption identify spatial-selection routes; polymerisation-induced phase separation, vitrimer exchange and programmed cleavage describe structure evolution after or during network formation. Treating these categories as one flat list encourages unsupported transfer of kinetics, inhibition, post-exposure behaviour and qualification criteria. This research architecture proposes six independent axes: trigger and activation event, active species, network-forming transformation, temporal or spatial control architecture, structure-evolution overlay and required qualification endpoint. The matrix is built only from controlled 3Dresyns Engineering Review sources already developed for dual-colour gating, sequential dual cure, polymerisation-induced phase separation, gelation and vitrification, reactivatable networks, covalent adaptable networks, thiol-ene and thiol-yne chemistry, cationic ring-opening photopolymerisation, cleavable networks, cationic latency and photobase systems. It is a scope and source gate rather than a complete literature review. Latent platinum or non-ROMP ruthenium catalysis, photochemical [2+2] or [4+4] cycloaddition, and photoinitiator-free charge-transfer-complex VPP are not admitted into the evidence-backed matrix because the controlled project corpus supplied for this stage does not support them. The recommended next version is a narrow matrix paper that preserves specialist-paper boundaries; expansion should occur only after exact source recovery and independent verification.