PHOTOSENSITIVE RESIN LAMINATE AND THERMAL PROCESSING OF THE SAME

摘要

A method of thermally developing a photocurable printing blank to produce a relief pattern comprising a plurality of relief dots. The photocurable printing blank comprises a backing layer having at least one photocurable layer disposed thereon and a laser ablatable mask layer disposed on top of the at least one photocurable layer. The method includes the steps of (1) imaging the at least one photocurable layer by ablating the laser ablatable mask layer to create the relief pattern on the surface of the at least one photocurable layer; (2) laminating an oxygen barrier membrane to a top of the laser ablated mask layer; (3) exposing the printing blank to actinic radiation through the oxygen barrier membrane and mask layer to one or more sources of actinic radiation to selectively crosslink and cure portions of the at least one photocurable layer, wherein the at least one photocurable layer is crosslinked and cured in the portions not covered by the mask layer, thereby creating the relief pattern; (4) removing the oxygen barrier membrane from the top of the laser ablated mask layer; and (5) thermally developing the printing blank to remove the laser ablated mask layer and uncured portions of the photocurable layer and reveal the relief pattern. The presence of the oxygen barrier membrane produces printing dots having desired characteristics. The method can also be used with an analog platemaking process that uses a negative instead of an ablatable mask layer, or, in the alternative, the negative itself can be used as the oxygen barrier layer.