Artificial remotely switchable and nature-inspired porous materials attracted enormous attention due to their control over permeability, selectivity and absorption capabilities stimulated by external triggers. A promising technique for the preparation of highly ordered polymer-based particles is the so called melt shear organization technique, for which tailor made and almost monodisperse core shell particles are a basic prerequisite. Such particles can be obtained by stepwise seeded emulsion polymerization and they can feature stimuli-responsive moieties as part of the core, the shell or the interlayer in between. During the melt shear organization, by application of moderate temperatures and pressure, the polymer particles merge into a colloidal crystal lattice inside the viscous polymer shell material. As a result, the core particles are arranged in a face centered cubic structure in a soft matrix. Different functional hard or soft materials comprising polymers, inorganic particles or hybrid polymer led to a manifold of different applications, e.g. in fields of optical sensors, membrane technologies or for catalysis. In this work, we focus on the combination of the outstanding optical properties of elastomeric inverse opal films and the redox-responsive behaviour of ferrocene containing polymers utilizing emulsion polymerization and the melt shear organization technique. The inorganic silica particle template was functionalized with siloxane containing monomers prior to transfer into the emulsion polymerization. A slightly cross linked interlayer and further emulsion polymerization of butyl methacrylate and 2 methacryloyloxy-ethyl-ferrocencarboxylate (FcMA) enables the introduction of a remotely switchable redox responsive metallopolymer shell. The final isoporous metallopolymer inverse opal shows intriguing optical properties, mechanical robustness and electrochemical reversibility. Besides the optical properties, these ferrocene containing inverse opals are used as redox-responsive membranes and (selective) electrochemical absorber.

Redox-responsive inverse opal films based on ferrocene containing core shell particles and the melt shear organization technique

256th National Meeting (2018)

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