Hydroxyl functionalized thermosensitive microgels with quadratic crosslinking density distribution

Semi-batch control over functional group distributions in thermoresponsive microgels

“…Batch PNIPAM-based microgels prepared with bisacrylamide or dimethacrylate crosslinkers are well known to contain crosslinker density distributions, in which a higher concentration of crosslinks is present in the microgel core [53][54][55] due to the faster consumption rate of crosslinker relative to NIPAM monomer during microgel formation [42]. As such, when a fixed number of ionized MAA residues are moved from the highly crosslinked core to the less crosslinked shell, the local crosslink density is reduced and higher overall degrees of swelling upon MAA ionization would be expected.…”

Size controlled synthesis of sub-100 nm monodisperse poly(methylmethacrylate) nanoparticles using surfactant-free emulsion polymerization

“…2, which is a widely used approach for the measure of monomer conversion [24][25][26]. The hydrodynamic diameter ratio is defined as the ratio of average hydrodynamic diameter (d) of forming particles at a certain time to the final hydrodynamic diameter (d f ) [25]. The figure shows that for all particle formulations, monomer conversion is completed within two hours.…”

Characterizing charge and crosslinker distributions in polyelectrolyte microgels

“…For example, Elmas et al fluorescently labeled the hydroxyl groups on a glycerol dimethacrylate crosslinker and subsequently used the crosslinker to synthesize poly(NIPAM) microgels via standard dispersion polymerization [46]. Confocal microscopy permitted direct identification of the quadratic distribution of crosslinker in the product microgel, with decreasing crosslink density toward the microgel surface.…”