Photopolymerization is extensively used in today's industrial field due to its advantages of rapid reaction, environmental friendly, energy saving and economical. Benzophenone is a most common photoinitiator (PI) using in photopolymerization because of its superior ability to initiate acrylate monomers. However, the intrinsic nature of initiator molecules is that they migrate out of polymer network, which limits its application, especially in the domain of food packaging materials. A polymerizable PI 4-methylbenzophenone acrylate (MBPAc) was synthesized by a facile procedure and characterized by H-1 NMR, C-13 NMR, and MS analyses. A systematic study of the photopolymerization kinetics of MBPAc was explored by the Real-Time Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer. The results show that the final conversion and photopolymerization rate of acrylate monomers are closely related to the factors of their chemical structure, viscosity, functionality and light intensity, which means MBPAc is an efficient PI. Ultraviolet-visible Spectrophotometer and vitro cytotoxicity measurement results indicate that the noncytotoxic MBPAc shows significantly lower migration than its analogue. (C) 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.