Controllable Fabrication and Oil-Water Separation Properties of Polyethylene Terephthaloyl-Ethylenediamine-IPN-poly(N-Isopropylacrylamide) Microcapsules

In this paper, we report a microcapsule embedded PNIPAN in P (TPC-EDA) shell and it can be regarded as an interpenetrating polymer network (IPN) structure, which can accelerate the penetration of oily substances at a certain temperature, and the microcapsules are highly monodisperse and dimensionally reproducible. The proposed microcapsules were fabricated in a three-step process. The first step was the optimization of the conditions for preparing oil in water emulsions by microfluidic device. In the second step, monodisperse polyethylene terephthaloyl-ethylenediamine (P(TPC-EDA)) microcapsules were prepared by interfacial polymerization. In the third step, the final microcapsules with poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM)-based interpenetrating polymer network (IPN) structure in P(TPC-EDA) shells were finished by free radical polymerization. We conducted careful data analysis on the size of the emulsion prepared by microfluidic technology and used a very intuitive functional relationship to show the production characteristics of microfluidics, which is rarely seen in other literatures. The results show that when the IPN-structured system swelled for 6 h, the adsorption capacity of kerosene was the largest, which was promising for water-oil separation or extraction and separation of hydrophobic drugs. Because we used microfluidic technology, the products obtained have good monodispersity and are expected to be produced in large quantities in industry.

Automated summary

In this paper, we present the fabrication of microcapsules embedded with PNIPAN in P(TPC-EDA) shells. These microcapsules exhibit an interpenetrating polymer network (IPN) structure, enabling rapid penetration of oily substances at specific temperatures, and they possess high uniformity and reproducibility in size. The microcapsules were synthesized through a three-step process involving the optimization of oil-in-water emulsion preparation using a microfluidic device, interfacial polymerization for the formation of monodisperse P(TPC-EDA) microcapsules, and the subsequent free radical polymerization to introduce a poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM)-based IPN structure in the P(TPC-EDA) shells. Our data analysis on the size of emulsions prepared by microfluidics offers an intuitive functional relationship, which is rarely observed in other literature. The swelling experiments demonstrated that the IPN-structured system exhibited the highest adsorption capacity for kerosene after 6 hours, thus showing promise for water-oil separation or the extraction and separation of hydrophobic drugs. Moreover, due to the use of microfluidic technology, the resulting microcapsules possess excellent monodispersity and are highly suitable for large-scale production in industry.