Revisiting the preparation of cylindrical polystyrene particles by magnetic stirring

Abstract

The cylindrical shape is one of the most common shapes in geometry. The preparation of cylindrical polystyrene (PS) particles by magnetic stirring has been previously reported (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.2018, 57, 9936–9940) via two steps: spherical PS particles were synthesized by dispersion polymerization of styrene with polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as the stabilizer, followed by stirring the spherical PS particles in a water medium in the presence of PVP. However, the effects of various parameters on the deformation were not fully investigated. Herein we report full details of the preparation of cylindrical PS particles by stirring at room temperature. The influence of PVP molecular weight in the polymerization process, and various stirring parameters such as the molecular weight of PVP for stirring, concentration of PVP for stirring, stirring time, stirring rate, size of stirrer and amount of the mixture for stirring on the morphology of the resulting particles was investigated systematically. Moreover, a larger glass vial and correspondingly a larger magnetic stirrer were used in this work, which could produce cylindrical polymer particles at a five-fold larger scale. However, the production of cylindrical polymer particles at a even (fifty-fold) larger scale was less successful and might lead to a substantial part of peanut-shaped particles. This work is expected to be useful for improved understanding of the formation of these cylindrical polymer particles.