Our group is interested on designing and developing macroporous polymers exhibiting hierarchical porosity. We are mainly using high internal phase emulsion (HIPE) templating approach to create porosity. HIPE templated polymers are known as polyHIPEs. PolyHIPEs are an emerging class of porous polymers offering advantages of well-defined porosity. These materials are known to be capable of using in various fields including adsorption, separation and chromatography, tissue engineering, storage of liquids, gases, energy, and catalysis of organic reactions.
Our main goals are including synthesizing polyHIPEs by using different building blocks such as bio-derived monomers, developing polyHIPEs with improved mechanical properties, tuning morphological and mechanical properties by using response surface design methodology based on statistical analysis, and designing functional polyHIPEs for specific tasks.
Until now, we developed polyHIPEs for the removal of heavy metals and organic dyes, heterogeneous photocatalytic degradation of organic pollutants and thermal energy storage. We also focused on the preparation of Pickering-HIPEs. For this purpose, we prepared surface modified nanoparticles for emulsion stabilization and synthesis of polyHIPE nanocomposites.
PolyMERT Research Group 