UV curing
photochemical curing by ultraviolet light
UV curing (ultraviolet curing) is the process by which ultraviolet light initiates a photochemical reaction that generates a crosslinked network of polymers through radical polymerization or cationic polymerization. UV curing is adaptable to printing, coating, decorating, stereolithography, and in the assembly of a variety of products and materials. UV curing is a low-temperature, high speed, and solventless process as curing occurs via polymerization. Originally introduced in the 1960s, this technology has streamlined and increased automation in many industries in the manufacturing sector.
Applications
UV curing is used for converting or curing inks, adhesives, and coatings. UV-cured adhesive has become a high speed replacement for two-part adhesives, eliminating the need for solvent removal, ratio mixing, and potential life concern. It is used in flexographic, offset, pad, and screen printing processes; where UV curing systems are used to polymerize images on screen-printed products, ranging from T-shirts to 3D and cylindrical parts. It is used in fine instrument finishing (guitars, violins, ukuleles, etc.), pool cue manufacturing and other wood craft industries. Printing with UV curable inks provides the ability to print on a very wide variety of substrates such as plastics, paper, canvas, glass, metal, foam boards, tile, films, and many other materials.
Industries that use UV curing include medicine, automobiles, cosmetics (for example artificial fingernails and gel nail polish), food, science, education, and art.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “UV curing” as photochemical curing by ultraviolet light. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18355911.
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This entry incorporates text from “UV curing” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.