Radiation preparation of microporous materials using bicontinuous microemulsion polymerization

Porous polymeric materials could be successfully prepared by gamma radiation polymerization of BA-containing microemulsions. The main aims of this paper are trying to control the pore structures of the polymer obtained by microemulsion polymerization and to alleviate the occurrence of phase separation during the polymerization of microemulsions. The emulsifier systems, including a nonionic mixture of OP-4 and OP-10, an anionic-nonionic mixture of SAO and OP-10, a cationic-nonionic mixture of CTAB and OP-4, could be used successfully to prepare stable, transparent microemulsions, which have different bicontinuous phase range. The resulting polymers were studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). It was found that their morphology characteristics strongly depended on the composition (water content, crosslinker content, functional comonomer) of the precursor microemulsions.