(573h) Effect of Curing Bath Conditions on the Morphology of Porous Hollow Poly(High Internal Phase Emulsion) Fibers

Porous hollow fibers have a variety of important technological applications including water treatment, the semiconductor industry, and also biomedical uses. Conventional methods for fabricating porous hollow fibers generally rely on electrospinning which requires the use of toxic organic solvents. Fabricating porous hollow fiber via templating from high internal phase emulsions (HIPEs) provides an environmentally friendly process alternative. In this work, we demonstrate how manipulation of the composition of the bath in which the poly(HIPE) fibers are cured can be used to tune the macroscopic and microscopic structure of the porous hollow fibers.

To create the porous hollow fibers, HIPE is extruded into an aqueous curing batch containing initiator and electrolyte (NaCl) in various concentrations. Through the combination of osmotic pressure effects (manipulated through setting the NaCl concentration difference between the curing bath and the aqueous phase within the HIPE) and the initiator concentration (which triggers the polymerization reaction at the HIPE-bath interface), different hollow fiber morphologies can be created. Scanning electron microscopy(SEM) image shows that parameters such as initiator concentration, electrolyte (NaCl) concentration, and curing temperature can be used to adjust the size of the hollow center and wall thickness, as well as the microstructure of the porous wall. This new approach enables the possibility of designing the morphology and structure of porous hollow fiber via manipulation of curing bath and processing conditions.