A facile route to poly(divinylbenzene) hollow microspheres with pyridyl group on the interior surface

Poly(divinylbenzene) (PDVB) hollow microspheres with pyridyl group located on their interior surface were prepared by a facile route with the aid of the vinyl groups on the surface of poly(methacrylic acid) (PMAA) microspheres, which were incorporated through the hydrogen-bonding interaction between the carboxylic acid group and pyridyl group of 4-vinylpyridine (VPy). Poly(methacrylic acid)@polydivinylbenzene (PMAA@PDVB) core–shell structure microspheres with PMAA as core and PDVB as shell were synthesized by a two-stage distillation–precipitation polymerization technique through the capture of the DVB monomer from solution of the reactive vinyl groups on pyridyl-functionalized PMAA microspheres based on a seeded-nucleation mechanism during the second-stage polymerization. The PDVB hollow microspheres with different shell thicknesses were developed after the PMAA core particles were removed by selective dissolution under basic condition in ethanol, during which the pyridyl group was left on the interior surface of the shell layer in PDVB hollow microspheres. The resultant core–shell and hollow microspheres were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), dynamic light scattering (DLS), Fourier transform infrared spectra (FT-IR) and elemental analysis.