Influence of a CO-switchable additive on the surface and foaming properties of a cationic non-switchable surfactant.

Switchable materials in general and CO-switchable materials in particular are of great interest in environmental research. The replacement of common non-switchable materials (solutions, solvents, surfactants, ) with their switchable counterparts has a great potential to make processes more environmentally friendly by enhancing reusability and circularity and thus reducing energy costs and material consumption. Inspired by this, the present work deals with the surface and foaming properties of aqueous solutions of a non-switchable surfactant in presence of a CO-switchable additive.

Emulsion templating: Unexpected morphology of monodisperse macroporous polymers.

Hypothesis: We synthesised monodisperse macroporous polymers via polymerisation of water-in-monomer droplet emulsions and obtained non-spherical pores with layered pore walls. We hypothesise that this morphology is caused by surfactant diffusion and phase separation during polymerisation.

Experiments: We varied the surfactant mass fraction of the emulsions and polymerised the templates with a water-soluble initiator.