Porous Polymer Particles with Tunable Surface Roughness by Combining Phase Separation and Interfacial Instability

Abstract

In this work, we introduced a method to prepare porous polymer particles with controllable surface textures by combining the strategies of emulsion interfacial instabilities and phase separation. The oil phase of the emulsion containing the polymer, a cosurfactant, and a nonvolatile oil, which is a nonsolvent for the polymer, is dissolved into a volatile good solvent. With the evaporation of the good solvent, interfacial instability was triggered because of the increasing concentrations of both the cosurfactant and polymer; meanwhile, phase separation between the polymer and the nonsolvent occurred. Completely removing the good solvent resulted in the formation of porous polymer particles with surface roughness. Varying the concentration of the cosurfactant and nonsolvent allowed the surface textures and internal pore structures to be tuned. Porous polymer particles with surface roughness could have potential applications in the fields of enzyme carriers, isolation and purification, superhydrophobic coatings, drug delivery, and so forth.

Iodine-influenced morphological evolution of micrometer-sized poly(methyl methacrylate)-block-poly(vinyl acetate) particles upon hydrolysis

“…Owing to this unique character, the confined assembly of amphiphilic block copolymers driven by interfacial instability gives rise to block copolymer particles with well-defined shapes and internal morphologies. [21][22][23] Commonly, the internal structure and the overall shape of particles could be tuned by adjusting the particle/surrounding solution interfacial property, during which the morphology could be typically influenced by the kind of solvent, the block fraction of the copolymer, and surfactant. [24][25][26] Zhu et al 26,27 investigated that the PVA concentration in the aqueous media plays a critical role in determining the particle shape.…”