Ring Opening Metathesis Polymerisation (ROMP) as a tool for polyHIPes with extraordinary mechanical properties.

PolyHIPE materials have been prepared by Ring Opening Metathesis Polymerisation (ROMP) of dicyclopentadiene. Two characteristic features for successful stabilization of high internal phase emulsions (HIPEs) were tuned in order to achieve improvements regarding mechanical properties of polyHIPEs. Mechanical properties of the new materials were related to variations of the surfactant concentration and the volume ratio of the internal phase in HIPEs. Values for Young's moduli were about a hundred times higher than in standard polyHIPE materials with the same level of porosity, which represents a major improvement for highly porous cellular polymeric materials. Moreover, fully interconnected macroporous morphology was found for polyHIPEs, where respective HIPEs were stabilized with only 0.25 v% of surfactant.