Abstract
Microspheres based on binary polymer blend consisting of polystyrene (PSt), poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), block copolymer comprising PSt and PMMA subunits, and ternary polymer blend consisting of PSt, PMMA, and block copolymer were fabricated by a solvent evaporation method, in which a polymer solution in dichloromethane was dispersed in water phase with the aid of a homogenizer to obtain an O/W emulsion followed by solvent evaporation with agitation to solidify the polymer. In the case of ternary blend, the effect of block copolymer content on the morphology of resulting spheres was investigated. Ternary blends afforded the bi-compartmental morphologies, the intermediate morphology between Janus and core-shell, which was confirmed by TEM observation. Seed polymerization of St or MMA was also carried out utilizing the resulting microspheres as seed particles in order to control the shape, and the surface morphology of particles. The particles with snowman-like morphology were obtained by seed polymerization of St using PSt/PMMA binary blend microspheres as seed particles. Surface roughness was controlled by the polymerization of MMA in the block copolymer seed, and that of St in the ternary blend seed.
Highlights
Micron-sized, monodispersed polymer particles are of great interest for a wide variety of applications, for ex-How to cite this paper: Taherzadeh, H., Sotowa, S. and Ogino, K. (2015) Morphology Control of Polymer Microspheres Containing Block Copolymers with Seed Polymerization
As Ma et al reported, a typical core-shell type morphology (PMMA; shell, PSt; core) is formed for PSt/poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) blend when poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) was used as a stabilizer [22], and microphase separated structure for PSt-b-PMMA
PSt-b-PMMA microspheres were used as seed particles, and final morphologies were observed after seed polymerization of methyl methacrylate (MMA) and St monomers
Summary
Micron-sized, monodispersed polymer particles are of great interest for a wide variety of applications, for ex-. (2015) Morphology Control of Polymer Microspheres Containing Block Copolymers with Seed Polymerization. It is expected that particles based on block copolymers and polymer blends exhibit specific morphologies resulting from phase separations. In order to fabricate nanoparticles with inner micro-phase separated structure, Yabu et al reported self-organized precipitation method [20] [21] in which a good solvent was evaporated from a block copolymer solution containing poor and good solvents. In order to afford novel functionality to polymeric microspheres, it is important to control surface and inner morphology as well as the chemical structure, particle size and its distribution. Surface and inner morphologies were investigated for the microspheres based on the blends consisting of polystyrene (PSt), poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and PS-b-PMMA, and seed polymerizations of St and MMA were conducted utilizing blend particles as the seed particles
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