Reaction-Diffusion Fronts in Photopolymer Networks: Species Mobility, Autoacceleration, Gradients and Pattern Formation

Reaction and diffusion become inseparable once radical mobility, oxygen transport and local conversion evolve on comparable timescales. ER-352 therefore treats cure-front motion as a spatially resolved transport problem rather than an optical-dose problem alone. Damkohler-, Peclet- and Thiele-type coordinates are used to distinguish reaction-limited, diffusion-limited and advectively perturbed regimes. Time-resolved spectroscopy, transport tracers, modulus mapping and cure-boundary imaging provide complementary observables. Feature-spacing, oxygen-boundary and exposure-history perturbations are used to determine when neighbouring fronts interact, when post-exposure migration matters, and whether optical compensation is sufficient to recover dimensional fidelity.

ER-352.