Laminate useful for the production of printing plates and relief plates

Claim 1

A laminate suitable for the production of printing plates and relief plates, comprising (a) a photosensitive layer of a mixture, soluble in water or in an aqueous solution, of (a 1 ) at least one hydrophilic polymeric binder, together with (a 2 ) at least one photopolymerizable ethylenically unsaturated monomer compatible therewith, and (a 3 ) a photoinitiator which can be activated by actinic light, (b) a dimensionally stable base, and (c) a thin intermediate layer between layers (a) and (b), which is formed from a mixture containing (c 1 ) a polymeric binder which is compatible with the hydrophilic polymeric binder (a 1 ) of layer (a) and contains not less than 30% by weight, based on the total amount of binder (c 1 ), of a reaction product of a polyvinyl alcohol with acrylic anhydride and/or methacrylic anhydride, which reaction product possesses from 3 to 30%, of its weight, of lateral acrylyl and/or methacrylyl groups, and (c 2 ) from 1 to 25% by weight, based on the mixture of (c 1 ) plus (c 2 ), of at least one photopolymerizable ethylenically unsaturated monomer compatible with (c 1 ) and selected from the group consisting of the hydroxyalkyl acrylates, where alkyl is of 2 or 3 carbon atoms, the hydroxyalkyl methacrylates, where alkyl is of 2 or 3 carbon atoms, and the monomers of the formula ##STR2## where R 1 , R 2 , R 3 and R 4 may be identical or different and each is H or C 1 -C 8 -alkyl, X is C 2 -C 7 -alkylene, a divalent aromatic C 6 -C 10 -hydrocarbon radical or isophoronylene, and m and n are each integers from 1 to 4 and may be identical or different, the intermediate layer being formed by applying its constituent mixture to the base (b) and then curing it at from 110° to 220° C.