Applications of polymerizable surfactants

Polymerizable surfactants (‘surfmers’) offer potential for developing hybrid nanometer-sized reaction and templating media. There has been a significant literature devoted to polymerization of, or in organized amphiphilic assemblies. This has led to the formation of a number of unique nano-materials including open-cell polymer networks, ultra-fine polymer latexes and inorganic/organic nano-composites, which exhibit novel properties, and would be unobtainable through conventional techniques. Amongst other parameters, surfmer composition and molecular structure play an extremely important role in the polymerization process, and essentially govern the final properties of the polymer. This review focuses on three main areas including the polymerization of micelles, vesicles, lyotropic liquid crystals or mesophases and microemulsions.