Preparation and characterization of porous polysucrose microspheres

A set of novel porous polysucrose microspheres were prepared by the inverse suspension polymerization using soluble polysucrose, epichlorohydrin (EP) as crosslinker and dimethyl ether of polyethylene glycol (DMPE) as porogen. The fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FTIR), optical microscope (OM), scanning electronic microscope (SEM) and laser diffraction method were utilized to characterize the structure and morphology of the porous microspheres. The results indicated that these beads had spherical shape with the mean particle size of around 340 μm, narrow distribution, and porous structure. The equilibrium water contents of these porous microspheres ranged from 92.1% to 96.6% with the increasing contents of porogen. The porosities ranged from 82.3% to 90.3% with the increasing hydroxyl contents from 19.3 to 21.8 mmol/g, and bovine serum albumin (BSA) was used as adsorbate model to examine the adsorption behavior of the porous microspheres. The saturated adsorption capacities of these microspheres ranged from 42.6 to 98.5 mg/g.