(532el) Synthesis of Highly Porous Polymer Microspheres with Interconnected Open Pores and Their Application As Catalytic Microreactors | AIChE

(532el) Synthesis of Highly Porous Polymer Microspheres with Interconnected Open Pores and Their Application As Catalytic Microreactors

Authors 

Shim, H. - Presenter, Pukyong National University
Because of the uniqueness beyond traditional microspheres, porous polymer microspheres with interconnective open pores have attracted continuous interests: however, developing a facile synthetic method to produce such unique particles remains a challenge. Herein, a method is proposed to produce highly porous polystyrene (PS) microspheres with interconnective open pores and very uniform size distribution, which were prepared by simply dispersing PS seed particles in the oil in water emulsion system. The morphological evolutions of the PS microspheres exposed to different types of oil in water emulsions were systematically investigated, and the relationship between the colloidal stability of the emulsions and the final structure of PS microspheres was studied. Based these results, the best oil in water system for synthesizing highly porous PS microspheres with interconnected open pores were found. The proposed synthetic method was found to offer significant advantages over previously developed methods: it is simple, fast, and easy to produce, not requiring special additives such as surfactant, complex techniques, etching processes to generate pores, and sophisticated equipment. Since our findings on the morphologies and structure of the highly porous PS microsphere with interconnective open pores motivated us to explore them as a support for catalysis, catalytic microreactors were fabricated by synthesizing mono- and bimetallic nanocrystals on the surface of the porous microspheres via the in situ chemical reduction. When the microreactors were used as a heterogenous catalyst for the 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) reduction reaction by sodium borohydride (NaBH4), they exhibited extremely high catalytic activity and excellent recyclability.