Fabrication of a poly(vinyl alcohol) monolith via thermally impacted non-solvent-induced phase separation

Mesoporous monolith of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) is successfully prepared by thermally impacted non-solvent induced phase separation without any templates. The pore and skeleton sizes can be controlled by changing the cooling temperature as well as the concentration and molecular weight of PVA. The nitrogen adsorption–desorption isotherms show that the PVA monolith has large surface area and uniform mesopore structure. The crosslinking using glutaraldehyde (GA) as crosslinking agent produces the water-insoluble monolith. By changing the concentration of GA, the crosslinked monolith with different swelling ratios toward water is obtained.