Polyfunctional vinyl ether terminated ester oligomers

Claim 1

A vinyl ether terminated oligomeric ester containing fewer than 5% unreacted alcoholic hydroxyl groups which is the esterification reaction product of a vinyl ether terminated alcohol of the formula R 1 CH═CR 2 OXOH, or a mixture of alcohols containing 1 molar proportion of a vinyl ether terminated alcohol of the aforesaid formula and from 0 to about 100 molar proportions of at least one diol of formula Z(OH) 2 , with a sufficient amount of a polycarboxylic acid having at least three carboxyl moieties such that there are essentially no free alcoholic hydroxyl groups in the resulting ester, where: R 1 and R 2 are independently selected from the group consisting of hydrogen and lower alkyl moieties containing up to about 10 carbon atoms; X(OH) 2 is selected from a group whose members are, an alkylene diol of the formula HO(C n H 2n )OH, where n is an integer from 2 to about 10; or a poly(ethyleneoxy) or poly(propyleneoxy) glycol, HO--[--CH 2 CH 2 O] m --H or HO--[--CH(CH 3 )CH 2 O] m --H, respectively, where m in an integer from 1 to about 50; or a bis(hydroxyalkyl)cycloalkane of formula [HO(CH 2 ) n ] 2 R 3 where n is an integer from 1 to about 6, and R 3 is a divalent radical whose parent is a saturated cyclic hydrocarbon of ring size 5 to 8 carbons; and Z(OH) 2 is a diol selected from the same preceding group containing X(OH) 2 , or any combination thereof.