Glycidyl methacrylate-based polyHIPEs: a facile redox-initiated polymerization of the oil phase in a water-in-oil emulsions and amine functionalization.

In this article, a simple and efficient method for the synthesis of highly porous monoliths based on glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) crosslinked with divinylbenzene (DVB) or ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) is presented. Redox-initiated polymerization in the external (oil) phase of a high internal phase emulsion (HIPE) is used. The use of the oil-soluble redox couple benzoyl peroxide/dimethyl-p-toluidine eliminates the need to heat the usually unstable GMA-based HIPEs during polymerization. The most striking feature of these cured GMA polyHIPEs is their open-cell, highly interconnected porous structure. The polyHIPEs crosslinked with EGDMA contain voids with a diameter of 10 to 13 µm, and the polyHIPEs crosslinked with DVB contain voids with a diameter of 10 to 22 µm. In both cases, the surfaces of the voids have a high density of windows with a diameter of 0.5 to 1 µm. Highly crosslinked poly(GMA-co-EGDMA) monoliths showed negligible volume shrinkage when heated to 200 °C. In order to obtain monoliths with ion-exchange groups on the surface of the pores for chromatography applications, functionalization with different multifunctional diamines was performed. FTIR spectroscopy and nitrogen content analysis were used to monitor the functionalization processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]