Application of room-temperature ionic liquids in preparation of highly porous polymer membranes and microspheres

Polylactic acid (PLA) and polycaprolactone (PCL) devices with diverse morphologies, such as particulate structure, porous structures, and microspheres, were prepared using imidazolium- or ammonium-based room-temperature ionic liquids [bmim]X or [toma]X (X = NTf₂ , PF₆ , OTf, BF₄ , Cl). Their morphological transformations could be induced by diverse approaches, including the changes of polymer type, the cationic or counter-anionic change of ionic liquid, the concentration change of ionic liquid, as well as the type and the quantity change of organic solvent. The results are likely to provide useful information for the production of diverse devices (or scaffolds) with particulate or porous structure and beads with various sizes and surface morphologies in fields such as biomedical tissue engineering, drug delivery, gas storage and separation, heterogeneous catalysis, and polymer gel electrolytes