The initiated chemical vapor deposition (iCVD) process is an all-dry, vacuum process used to deposit a wide variety of functional polymers. Typically, the monomer and initiator radicals are introduced simultaneously at process conditions leading to undersaturation of monomer vapors. In this work we report a sequential vapor phase polymerization method in which monomer droplets were first condensed onto a layer of silicone oil and subsequently polymerized via a free radical mechanism to fabricate polymer particles. A heterogeneous particle size distribution was produced at low viscosities of silicone oil where the smaller particles were formed by the cloaking and engulfment of monomer droplets nucleated at the vapor-liquid interface and the larger particles were formed by coalescence inside the liquid. Coalescence could be inhibited by increasing the viscosity of the silicone oil leading to a decreased average radius and a narrower size distribution of the polymer particles. A transition to polymer film formation was observed on 100,000 cSt silicone oil. We studied the polymerization of two different monomers, 4-vinyl pyridine and 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate, since these polymers have a variety of useful properties such as pH-responsiveness and biocompatibility. The advantages of our method for the fabrication of polymer particles are that it does not require surfactants or organic solvents and features short reaction times compared to conventional polymer particle synthesis methods such as emulsion polymerization.

Synthesis of functional particles by condensation and polymerization of monomer droplets in silicone oils

256th National Meeting (2018)

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