Precipitation polymerization for the synthesis of nanostructured particles

The present study investigates the potential of precipitation polymerization as a promising technique for the synthesis of novel polymer-based materials for various applications. More specifically, precipitation polymerization is employed for the production of imprinted particles towards amino acid derivatives such as Boc-l-tryptophan and Cbz-l-histidine. In case of Boc-l-tryptophan, the imprinting was based on hydrogen bonds while in the case of Cbz-l-histidine it was based on coordination bonds. The effect of solvent type and agitation rate on the physical properties and the imprinting efficiency of the produced polymers were studied. Moreover, precipitation polymerization is also employed for the synthesis of hybrid polystyrene/silica nanoparticles. In this case, the basic 4-VP was used as auxiliary co-monomer providing strong acid–base interaction between the acidic silica nanoparticles and the produced polymeric chains.