Fabrication of porous polydimethylsiloxane using camphor substitutes

Abstract

Porous polydimethylsiloxane is an essential component in portable microfluidic devices. Unlike its solid counterparts, these polymeric membranes are preferred for their low cost and superior mechanical strength. The most common method of preparation studied so far is soft lithography using emulsion templating. In this paper, we employed emulsion templating to fabricate porous polydimethylsiloxane using various substitutes of camphor such as camphor oil and camphor powder. Camphor, a sublimatory material that sublimes on heating, has been exploited to prepare the sacrificial template for the porous structure. We reported and compared different preparation techniques based on their physical properties which resulted in membranes with a hierarchical pore structure within a composite polymeric matrix.