Formulation and polymerization of foamed 1,4-BDDMA-in-water emulsions

Emulsion and foam templating allow the synthesis of tailor-made polymer foams. A complementary templating route is foamed emulsion templating. The concept is based on the generation of a monomer-in-water emulsion which is subsequently foamed. After polymerization of the foamed emulsion, one obtains open-cell polymer foams with porous pore walls. In the paper at hand, we generated foamed emulsions and synthesized polymer foams which are based on the monomer 1,4-butanediol dimethacrylate (1,4-BDDMA). The main challenge was to find the optimal composition of the emulsion by varying the components systematically. We will discuss that the composition of the monomer-in-water emulsion is key for the stability of the foamed emulsion and thus for the structure of the resulting polymer foam. The final composition of the continuous phase was found to be 65 vol% 1,4-BDDMA, 30 vol% water and 5 vol% glycerol. We foamed and polymerized this emulsion to check the foamed emulsion's suitability as a template for solid polymer foams. We generated a foamed emulsion with a mean bubble diameter of 151 μm ± 90 μm and obtained a highly porous poly(1,4-BDDMA) foam with a pore mean diameter of 366 μm ± 91 μm. Furthermore, the polymer foam has a “sub-porosity” within the pore walls.