Summary: An oil‐in‐water high internal phase emulsion consisting of acrylic acid, water, and a crosslinker (N,N′‐methylene bisacrylamide) as the water phase, and toluene as the oil phase was successfully stabilised to sustain thermal initiation of radical polymerisation resulting in porous open‐cellular monolithic material. The type of initiator used influenced the average pore size ranging from approx. 708 nm to approx. 1 087 nm, as determined by mercury porosimetry.Schematic of the preparation of an oil‐in‐water‐type polyHIPE (high internal phase emulsion).imageSchematic of the preparation of an oil‐in‐water‐type polyHIPE (high internal phase emulsion).
Preparation of highly porous (up to 80% pore volume) open-cellular monolithic cross-linked polymers from 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate is reported. Oil-in-water and water-in-oil high internal phase emulsions are applied as porosity templates, resulting in an interconnected porous structure with void diameters between 550 nm and 18 µm. Significantly larger voids were obtained in the case of oil-in-water emulsions (between 5 and 18 µm) as opposed to water in oil emulsions (approx 600 nm). Controlled coarsening exploiting limited kinetical stability of emulsions was used to obtain monoliths with larger voids, diameters being enlarged 3-fold.
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