Polymer latex particles are nanofunctional materials with widespread applications including electronics, pharmaceuticals, photonics, cosmetics, and coatings. These materials are typically prepared using waterborne heterogeneous systems such as emulsion, miniemulsion, and suspension polymerization. However, all of these processes are limited to water-stable catalysts and monomers mainly polymerizable via radical polymerization. We describe a method to overcome this limitation: nonaqueous emulsions can serve as a versatile tool for the synthesis of new types of polymer nanoparticles. To form these emulsions, two nonmiscible nonpolar/polar aprotic organic solvents mixtures of either DMF or acetonitrile in alkanes and carefully designed amphiphilic block and statistical copolymers, such as polyisoprene-b-poly(methyl methacrylate) (PI-b-PMMA), as additives are used to stabilize these emulsions.We demonstrate how nonaqueous emulsions allow the use of a broad variety of hydrolyzable monomers and sensitive catalysts to yield polyester, polyurethane, polyamide, and conducting polymers under ambient reaction conditions. Because metallocenes are sensitive to nitrile and carbonyl groups,we developed a second system, which consists of alkanes dispersed in perfluoroalkanes. In this case, we designed a new amphipolar polymeric emulsifier with fluorous and aliphatic side chains to stabilize the emulsions. Such heterogeneous mixtures facilitated the catalytic polymerization of ethylene or propylene to give spherical nanoparticles of high molecular weight polyolefins. This nonpolar emulsion strategy dramatically increases the chemical palette of polymers that can form nanoparticles via emulsion polymerization.

Non-aqueous emulsion as a versatile tool for new types of nanoparticles

255th National Meeting (2018)

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