Mesoporous polystyrene nanoparticles synthesized by semicontinuous heterophase polymerization

The synthesis by semicontinuous heterophase polymerization and the characterization of mesoporous crosslinked polystyrene particles in the nanometer range (ca. 30 nm) are reported here. The particles have pores between 6 and 8 nm in diameter and pore volume around 0.40 cm(3)/g. In spite that the polymerization was not carried out at highly monomer-starved conditions, particles with narrow size distribution were obtained, which is ascribed to inter-particle hetero-coagulation at latter stages of polymerization, due to lack of enough surfactant to cover all the particles even before 45% global conversion.