Fabrication of porous polymer microspheres by tuning amphiphilicity of the polymer and emulsion–solvent evaporation processing

• A facile and template-free approach to prepare porous microspheres is presented.
• Amphiphilicity of block copolymer plays an important role in the formation of pores.
• The porous microspheres demonstrate photo-responsive properties.

A facile and effective approach to prepare porous microspheres by poly(4-vinylpyridie)-b-Poly{6-[4-(4-butyloxyphenylazo)phenoxy]hexyl methacrylate} (P4VP-b-PAzoMA) is presented. By tuning polymer compositions and concentration of polymer or surfactant in emulsion droplets, a series of microspheres with controllable particle size and porous structure were obtained. The formation of porous microspheres could be attributed to the synergy effect between emulsion–solvent evaporation and amphiphilicity of copolymer. Upon subsequent linearly polarized light irradiation, the microspheres as well as the pores can be elongated. This versatile approach for preparing porous microspheres can be applied to various amphiphilic copolymers, which may extend promising applications in the fields of gas storage, catalyst carrier and so forth.

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