Projects per year
Abstract
Mesoporous glasses (10 nm pores) and macroporous polymers (1 μm pores) are often used as frits in the fabrication of aqueous reference electrodes. These frits function as salt bridges that allow for electrical contact between the sample and reference solutions while slowing cross contamination of the two solutions. Unfortunately, mesoporous glass and macroporous polymer frits used for these purposes inherently result in sample-dependent potentials or in rapid cross contamination of the sample and reference solutions, respectively. To address these issues, we synthesized mesoporous polymer frits, with much smaller pore sizes (10 nm) and electrically neutral hydrophilic pore walls. These monoliths were prepared from a bicontinuous, microphase-separated, and cross-linked block polymer precursor, that is, poly(lactide)-b-poly(isoprene)-b-poly(styrene-co-divinylbenzene), PLA-b-PI-b-P(S-co-DVB). The PLA serves as a selectively etchable sacrificial block, the PI provides latent reactive sites on the pore walls, and the P(S-co-DVB) forms the mechanically robust matrix. Subjecting the PI repeat units in the monoliths to epoxidation and subsequent hydrolysis reactions renders the pore walls hydrophilic and uncharged, permitting the use of the polymer as a porous frit material in reference electrodes with aqueous electrolyte solutions. This monolith chemistry allows for reference electrodes with reduced flow rates that approach those of mesoporous glass frits and thus mitigated cross contamination. Moreover, reference electrode potential variations are reduced across a large range of electrolyte concentrations.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 139-144 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | ACS Applied Nano Materials |
Volume | 1 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 26 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2017 American Chemical Society.
Keywords
- electrochemical measurements
- polymerization-induced microphase separation
- porous frits
- porous polymers
- reference electrodes
How much support was provided by MRSEC?
- Shared
Reporting period for MRSEC
- Period 6
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Functionalized Mesoporous Polymers with Enhanced Performance as Reference Electrode Frits'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.-
MRSEC IRG-3: Hierarchical Multifunctional Macromolecular Materials
Reineke, T. M., Bates, F. S., Dorfman, K., Dutcher, C. S., Hillmyer, M. A., Lodge, T., Morse, D. C., Siepmann, I., Barreda, L. & Ganewatta, M. S.
1/1/98 → …
Project: Research project
-
MRSEC Program
THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS RIO GRANDE VALLEY
8/1/98 → 10/31/20
Project: Research project