Synthesis and Characterization of Porous Liquids

Porous liquids consisting of modified hollow spheres which are fabricated by surface engineering with suitable corona and canopy species is one of interesting porous liquids reported recently. By taking advantage of the liquid-like polymeric matrices as a separation medium and the empty cavities as a gas transport pathway, porous liquids can function as promising candidates for postcombustion gas separation and thermal insulation purposes. Moreover, this synthetic strategy can be applied to other nanostructure-based porous liquids, facilitating production of porous liquids with specific request. In this thesis, a new member of this type of porous liquid with hollow spheres ranging from 400~500 nm was synthesized. The polystyrene (PS) spheres were first used as templates for the synthesis of silica hollow spheres employing the Stöber method. The PS sphere template was then removed by thermal decomposition and followed by subsequent surface modification and ion exchange. Several methods were used to characterize the resulting material including scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface analysis. This work demonstrated the possibility of synthesizing a porous liquid with a large sphere core and therefore expanding the family of porous liquids.