Morphology Variation of Porous Polymer Gels by Polymerization in Lyotropic Surfactant Phases

Polymerization of hydrophilic monomers, such as acrylamide, in the confinement of lyotropic liquid crystalline phases of nonionic surfactants produces gels with variable pore architecture in the hundreds of nanometers to micrometers size range. The porous gels are characterized by scanning electron microscopy after critical-point drying. The structure of the gels depends on the type of monomer, cross-linking density, and both monomer and surfactant concentration and can be varied systematically to result in different pore morphologies with different pore sizes. In such a way it is possible to build the polymer network structure on a mesoscopic length scale, optimizing different network properties which are otherwise coupled in an opposite fashion; e.g., polymer networks with very large pore size and high mechanical stability can be made.