Preparation of emulsion-templated fluorinated polymers and their application in oil/water separation

A series of emulsion-templated fluorinated polymers (polyHIPEs) were first synthesized with introducing 2-(perfluorohexyl)ethyl methacrylate (PEM) to the external phase of water-in-styrene high internal phase emulsion (HIPE) templates. The morphology (i.e., void size and its distribution) of these porous materials could be tuned simply by changing PEM and/or surfactant amount. The synergistic effect between the surface chemistry and surface architecture allowed the polyHIPEs to possess hydrophobicity with a water contact angle of 151 degrees. The superhydrophobicity and oleophilicity of the polyHIPEs, together with their highly open porous structure, make the material a very competitive candidate as a filtration material for oil/water separation in practice with the efficiency of separating dichloromethane from the oil/water mixture of 95%. Such oil/water separating capacity was maintained after 10 cycles of filtration of oil/water, indicating the cyclic usage of the polyHIPE is feasible. (c) 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2018, 56, 1508-1515