Miniemulsion ring-opening polymerization

Quemener D, Heroguez V, Gnanou Y (2005) Latex particles by miniemulsion ring-opening metathesis polymerization. Macromolecules 38 7977-7982... 

The first step reaction example involves the preparation of water-based epoxy resins via ring-opening polymerizations of different epoxides with various diamines, dithiols or diols residing in the miniemulsion droplets at 60°C [75]. The basic requirement for successful miniemulsion polymerization is that both reactive components exhibit relatively low solubility in the continuous aqueous phase. The diepoxide Epikote E828, triepoxide Decanol EX-314, and tetraepoxide EX-411 are potential candidates for this purpose. Furthermore, incorporation of conventional costabilizers such as hexadecane into the... 

For the ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) in heterophase [81], a water-soluble ruthenium alkylidene was employed for the emulsion polymerization of norbornene, and an oil-soluble catalyst for the miniemulsion polymerization of norbornene and 1,5-cyclooctadiene. Similar to the polymerization of ethylene in heterophase, an organic solution of the catalyst was first miniemulsified in water, after which the monomer was added to the miniemulsion. This resulted in a high monomer conversion for norbornene ( up to 97%), and a particle size of 250nm. 

Emulsion droplets can also serve as soft templates to produce capsules. A range of cross-linking chemistries on the interface of oil-in-water emulsion droplets, whereby introducing various polymer functionalities in the resulting capsules has been employed. These are ring-opening metathesis polymerization [59], interfacial step-growth polymerization [60], metal coordination polymerization also termed miniemulsion periphery polymerization [61], surface-initiated miniemulsion ATRP [62, 63], and inverse miniemulsion periphery RAFT polymerization [64, 65]. 

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