Preparation of emulsion‐templated fluorinated polymers and their application in oil/water separation

Abstract

A series of emulsion‐templated fluorinated polymers (polyHIPEs) were first synthesized with introducing 2‐(perfluorohexyl)ethyl methacrylate (PEM) to the external phase of water‐in‐styrene high internal phase emulsion (HIPE) templates. The morphology (i.e., void size and its distribution) of these porous materials could be tuned simply by changing PEM and/or surfactant amount. The synergistic effect between the surface chemistry and surface architecture allowed the polyHIPEs to possess hydrophobicity with a water contact angle of 151°. The superhydrophobicity and oleophilicity of the polyHIPEs, together with their highly open porous structure, make the material a very competitive candidate as a filtration material for oil/water separation in practice with the efficiency of separating dichloromethane from the oil/water mixture of 95%. Such oil/water separating capacity was maintained after 10 cycles of filtration of oil/water, indicating the cyclic usage of the polyHIPE is feasible. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2018, 56, 1508–1515

Production of High Internal Phase Emulsion with a Miniature Twin Screw Extruder

“…This phenomenon agreed to the effect of the surfactant content on the HIPE and its resulting polyHIPE prepared with traditional methods. 14,50…”

“…A polyHIPE is a kind polymer foam with a tunable porous structure, low density, and very high pore volume, which make the materials have great potential applications in areas such as scaffolds for tissue engineering, 4−6 water treatment, 7,8 supports for catalysis, 9−12 and separation membranes. 13,14…”

Pickering emulsion-templated polymers: insights into the relationship between surfactant and interconnecting pores

“…Macroporous polymers have extensive applications in many elds, such as tissue engineering scaffolds, [1][2][3][4] controlled release, [5][6][7][8][9] ion adsorption, 10-13 separation 14,15 and supports for catalysis. [16][17][18][19][20] These applications normally require porous polymers with an open-cell structure.…”

Effect of different treatments and SiO2/PVDF coatings on morphology and wettability of electrospun polyamide 6 membranes

“…Various methods have been proposed for preparation of the rough surface, such as layer-by-layer (LBL) assembly, etching, sol-gel method, template method, coating, solution immersion method, laser processing, lithography, chemical vapor deposition, and electrospinning. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] Each method has its advantages and disadvantages. Some of them are easy and fast to operate but only can be used to some special materials and may be very expensive, such as chemical vapor deposition, 1 LBL lithography, 2 and laser processing, 5 and others may have a lower cost and can be used to various materials but need complex operation and cannot be used to the large area fabrication, such as lithography and sol-gel method.…”

“…Therefore, increasing surface roughness on a low surface energy material, and lowering the surface energy of the material with a rough surface are two methods to prepare hydrophobic or superhydrophobic materials. Various methods have been proposed for preparation of the rough surface, such as layer‐by‐layer (LBL) assembly, etching, sol–gel method, template method, coating, solution immersion method, laser processing, lithography, chemical vapor deposition, and electrospinning . Each method has its advantages and disadvantages.…”