Fabrication of Cross-Linked Polyimide Hollow Microspheres With Lightweight, Thermal Resistance and Controllable Size

Polyimide (PI) hollow microspheres possess lightweight and excellent thermal resistance, which are widely used in microreactors, catalysis, adsorption separation, high-temperature insulation, and so on. In this manuscript, PI hollow microspheres are fabricated by constructing a crosslinked structure combined with gradient heating. The formation of PI hollow microspheres includes gas nucleation, expansion, and imidization. The PI hollow microspheres size is controlled by adjusting polyester ammonium salts size, and microspheres size is distributed in 309–956 µm. PI hollow microspheres have lightweight, excellent heat resistance and carbonization performance, bulk density, initial decomposition temperature, and weight residue at 800 °C is 87.3–178.6 kg m⁻³, 533.6 °C and 59.8%. The PI hollow microspheres have potential applications in high-temperature resistant and multifunctional composite materials preparation. Moreover, this method is simple, efficient, and highly operable, which can be used for large-scale production of PI hollow microspheres.