Luminescent Water Dispersible Microporous Polymeric Nanospheres

Water-dispersible porous polymeric dispersions (PPDs) have been synthesised by reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer mediated polymerisation-induced self-assembly (RAFT-mediated PISA). The core-shell particles posses a microporous core formed from divinylbenzene and fumaronitrile while the outer polyethylene glycol shell enables the particles to be dispersible in a wide range of solvents. The PPD was shown to have a heirarchical structure of small primary nanoparticles within larger, well-defined aggregates of 220 nm as measured by electron microscopy and small angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) and exhibited a surface area of 274 m²/g. Furthermore these samples were found to be fluoresent and demonstrate selective detection of harmful nitroaramatics in solution with extremly low limits of detection, 169 ppb for picric acid, as well as possessing a CO₂ uptake of 1.1 mmol/g at 273 K.