Preparation Of Functional Polymer Microspheres With Reactive Epoxy Groups And Their Applications

Recently,polymer microspheres with epoxy groups have received more and more attention as their wide applications,such as chelating ligand for ion exchanges,supporters for chromatography,and adsorbent for blood detoxification,due to the reactive epoxy groups on the surface of microspheres can be facilely converted by the modification reactions with nucleophiles into various functional groups,including amino,hydroxyl,aldehyde,and thiol,while the thermal stability,dimensional stability,and chemical resistance of the materials are well retained.Thus,we prepared polymer microspheres with epoxy groups by distillation precipitation polymerization?DPP?and then build hybird composites with particular functional structures and special morphology for good performance in application,such as catalytic property,hydrophobicity etc.,as the following two works:Narrow disperse poly?divinylbenzene-co-glycidyl methacrylate??P?DVB-co-GMA??microspheres with reactive epoxy group were prepared by distillation precipitation copolymerization of divinylbenzene?DVB?and glycidyl methacrylate?GMA?with benzoyl peroxide?BPO?as initiator in neat acetonitrile.The epoxy group was modified with ethylenediamine?EDA?for transferring to amino group,which was used as a stabilizer for the gold metallic nanocolloids during the in situ reduction of gold chloride trihydrate?HAuCl₄?with sodium borohydride?NaBH₄?as a reductant.The catalytic properties of the microsphere stabilized gold nanocolloids?P?DVB-co-GMA?-NH₂@Au?were investigated by the reduction of aqueous 4-nitrophenol?4-NP?to 4-aminophenol?4-AnP?with NaBH4 as reductant.The core–corona polymer hybrid particle with a raspberry-like structure was prepared by a heterocoagulation through the chemical reaction between the epoxy groups of silica/poly?divinylbenzene-co-glycidyl methacrylate??SiO₂/P?DVB-co-GMA??core–shell small microspheres and the amino groups of amino-modified poly?divinylbenzene-co-glycidyl methacrylate??P?DVB-co-GMA?-NH₂?microspheres,in which SiO₂/P?DVB-co-GMA?acted as the corona and P?DVB-co-GMA?-NH₂ behaved as the core.The film of resultant raspberry-like hybrid particles with dual-size structure had an average contact angle?CA?of141.8^?,indicating great prospects in the super-hydrophobic applications.