A facile strategy to improve the encapsulation efficiency of polymer microcapsules containing water‐soluble salt cores

ABSTRACT To increase the encapsulation efficiency of microcapsules composed of water‐soluble salt cores and hydrophobic material shells, we herein reported a facile and versatile strategy to improve the hydrophobicity of water‐soluble salts [i.e., ammonium persulfate (APS)] by surface modification of APS using oleic acid or silane coupling agent, respectively. The results confirmed that the hydrophobicity of the two modified APS had been successfully improved compared with that of non‐modified APS. Moreover, the two modified APS could be effectively encapsulated into hydrophobic polystyrene and the encapsulation efficiency of the resulting microcapsules goes up significantly. This study was expected to drive progress in the preparation technology of microcapsules which comprise water‐soluble salts as cores and hydrophobic polymer materials as shells in many industrial application fields. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2017 , 134 , 45294.