title: Polyvinyl alcohol-based hydrophilic monoliths from water-in-oil high internal phase emulsion template.
abstract: Herein, we report a new approach to fabricate polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) based hydrophilic monoliths by alcoholysis of porous emulsion-templated polyvinyl acetate (PVAc). The precursory PVAc-based monolith is obtained by polymerization of a W/O high internal phase emulsion (HIPE) containing vinyl acetate as the external phase while water as the internal phase. As an alcoholysis-stable tri-functional commonomer, triallyl isocyanurate is chosen as the crosslinking agent to prevent possible collapse of the polymeric skeleton and the consequent losses in mechanical properties during the alcoholysis step. By alcoholysis of the resulting PVAc-based monolith, the PVA-based monoliths are successful prepared as confirmed by FTIR analysis. BET analysis and SEM observation confirm the formation of open-cell and highly interconnected porous structures of PVA-based monoliths with surface areas of around 16m2/g. Stemming from the intrinsic hydrophilicity of hydroxyl and morphology, PVA-based monoliths exhibit great enhancement in hydrophilicity with a much lower water contact angles than that of PVAc-based monoliths.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering of China (Sichuan University), Polymer Research Institute of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China.
authors.forename: Xiao
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Meng
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering of China (Sichuan University), Polymer Research Institute of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China.
authors.forename: Ni
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering of China (Sichuan University), Polymer Research Institute of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China.
authors.forename: Jin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering of China (Sichuan University), Polymer Research Institute of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China. Electronic address: jianglong@scu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Long
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering of China (Sichuan University), Polymer Research Institute of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China. Electronic address: danyichenweiwei@163.com.
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Dan
keywords: Alcoholysis; HIPE; Hydrophilicity; Monolith; Polyvinyl alcohol