Highly internal phase emulsion (polyHIPE) materials are promising macrocellular foams bearing versatile applications ranging from catalysis, optics, filtration, insulator and so forth. In this critical review water-in-oil HIPE, oil-in-water HIPE and Pickering-based HIPE are discussed. Also in each above-mentioned HIPE family, declination between the organic, inorganic or hybrid-organic foams chemical nature is proposed. The polyHIPE audience is thereby strongly interdisciplinary in nature crossing boundaries of physical chemistry, colloids, polymer science, sol-gel chemistry, hybrid materials, biology and beyond (114 references).
The elaboration of organo-silica-based hybrid monoliths exhibiting a hierarchical trimodal porous structure (micro-, meso-, and macroporosity) with tunable functionality have been synthesized for the first time via high internal phase emulsion (HIPE) process and lyotropic mesophases. Through one-pot synthesis, many organic functionalities that can act as network modifiers (methyl, dinitrophenylamino, benzyl, and mercaptopropyl) or co-network formers (pyrrol) have been anchored to the amorphous silica porous network. The resulting materials have been thoroughly characterized via a large set of techniques: SEM, TEM, SAXS, mercury porosimetry, nitrogen adsorption isotherms, FTIR, 29 Si MAS NMR, and XPS. These sol-gel-derived hierarchical open-cell functional hybrid monoliths exhibit macroscopic void spaces ranging from 5 µm up to 30 µm and their accessible micro-and mesoporosities reveal hexagonal organization for the dinitrophenylamino-, benzyl-, and pyrrol-based hybrids. The average condensation degree for these hybrid networks ranges between 86 and 90%, yielding shaped monoliths with both good integrity and sufficient mechanical properties to be usable as functional catalytic or chromatographic supports. Also, function accessibility has been demonstrated through heterogeneous nucleation of Pd metallic nanoparticles.
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