A facile route to bespoke macro- and mesoporous block copolymer microparticles
We report a facile and versatile strategy for the bespoke fabrication of macro- and mesoporous block copolymer microparticles. A clean synthetic route, RAFT dispersion polymerisation in supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2), is used to generate block copolymer microparticles. Selective swelling/deswe...
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| Format: | Article |
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Royal Society of Chemistry
2018
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52916/ |
| _version_ | 1848798839568334848 |
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| author | He, Guping Bennett, Thomas M. Alauhdin, Mohammad Fay, Michael W. Liu, Xin Schwab, Simon T. Sun, Cheng-gong Howdle, Steven M. |
| author_facet | He, Guping Bennett, Thomas M. Alauhdin, Mohammad Fay, Michael W. Liu, Xin Schwab, Simon T. Sun, Cheng-gong Howdle, Steven M. |
| author_sort | He, Guping |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | We report a facile and versatile strategy for the bespoke fabrication of macro- and mesoporous block copolymer microparticles. A clean synthetic route, RAFT dispersion polymerisation in supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2), is used to generate block copolymer microparticles. Selective swelling/deswelling is then applied to induce controlled morphology transitions and to trap the resulting porous state. The pore sizes are controllable over a large size range (~20 – 200 nm) by varying the length of the swellable block. Through a systematic approach we then demonstrate that the shape of the pores can also be tailored from isolated spheres through to interconnected/bicontinuous channels by varying the ratio of the two blocks. This process is shown to be applicable to a range of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)based block copolymer systems, including PMMA-b-poly(4-vinyl pyridine), PMMAb-poly(dimethyl acrylamide) (DMA) and PMMA-bpoly(dimethylaminoethylmethacrylate) (DMAEMA). In each case, the second minority block (e.g. P4VP, etc.) was selectively swollen with an alcohol to induce an order-toorder morphology transition and then quenched rapidly by the non-solvent hexane. This not only takes place on the order of hours, but is also freely scalable for the production of grams of material and beyond in a single step following polymerisation. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:26:09Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-52916 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:26:09Z |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| publisher | Royal Society of Chemistry |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-529162020-05-04T19:40:46Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52916/ A facile route to bespoke macro- and mesoporous block copolymer microparticles He, Guping Bennett, Thomas M. Alauhdin, Mohammad Fay, Michael W. Liu, Xin Schwab, Simon T. Sun, Cheng-gong Howdle, Steven M. We report a facile and versatile strategy for the bespoke fabrication of macro- and mesoporous block copolymer microparticles. A clean synthetic route, RAFT dispersion polymerisation in supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2), is used to generate block copolymer microparticles. Selective swelling/deswelling is then applied to induce controlled morphology transitions and to trap the resulting porous state. The pore sizes are controllable over a large size range (~20 – 200 nm) by varying the length of the swellable block. Through a systematic approach we then demonstrate that the shape of the pores can also be tailored from isolated spheres through to interconnected/bicontinuous channels by varying the ratio of the two blocks. This process is shown to be applicable to a range of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)based block copolymer systems, including PMMA-b-poly(4-vinyl pyridine), PMMAb-poly(dimethyl acrylamide) (DMA) and PMMA-bpoly(dimethylaminoethylmethacrylate) (DMAEMA). In each case, the second minority block (e.g. P4VP, etc.) was selectively swollen with an alcohol to induce an order-toorder morphology transition and then quenched rapidly by the non-solvent hexane. This not only takes place on the order of hours, but is also freely scalable for the production of grams of material and beyond in a single step following polymerisation. Royal Society of Chemistry 2018-06-15 Article PeerReviewed He, Guping, Bennett, Thomas M., Alauhdin, Mohammad, Fay, Michael W., Liu, Xin, Schwab, Simon T., Sun, Cheng-gong and Howdle, Steven M. (2018) A facile route to bespoke macro- and mesoporous block copolymer microparticles. Polymer Chemistry, 9 (27). p. 3808. ISSN 1759-9954 http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2018/PY/C8PY00707A#!divAbstract doi:10.1039/c8py00707a doi:10.1039/c8py00707a |
| spellingShingle | He, Guping Bennett, Thomas M. Alauhdin, Mohammad Fay, Michael W. Liu, Xin Schwab, Simon T. Sun, Cheng-gong Howdle, Steven M. A facile route to bespoke macro- and mesoporous block copolymer microparticles |
| title | A facile route to bespoke macro- and mesoporous block copolymer microparticles |
| title_full | A facile route to bespoke macro- and mesoporous block copolymer microparticles |
| title_fullStr | A facile route to bespoke macro- and mesoporous block copolymer microparticles |
| title_full_unstemmed | A facile route to bespoke macro- and mesoporous block copolymer microparticles |
| title_short | A facile route to bespoke macro- and mesoporous block copolymer microparticles |
| title_sort | facile route to bespoke macro- and mesoporous block copolymer microparticles |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52916/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52916/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/52916/ |