Techniques for Preparation of Porous Polymer Particles: Recent Achievements

Porous polymer particles containing internal and external pores have a very large specific area, relatively low density, permeability and excellent adsorption capacity. The structure of pores (porosity, pore size, specific area) are the main factors governing the application of such materials in various catalyst fields, separation, solid phase extraction, ion exchange, sensors storage and drug delivery. Extensive applications of porous particles are forcing researchers to develop conventional methods such as suspension polymerization, dispersion, precipitation, seed sweeling polymerization and new membrane / microchannel and microfluidic emulsification methods.In all these methods, different porogen are used in the first stage, followed by the removal of the porogen to produce pores. In this study, all different polymerization techniques for the preparation of porous polymer particles with spherical and non-spherical structure, functionality are reviewed and the advantages and disadvantages of each method in terms of particle properties and particle size distribution are mentioned.