CO2-Responsive Nano-Objects with Assembly-Related Aggregation-Induced Emission and Tunable Morphologies

Liang Qiu; Haoran Zhang; Bo Wang; Yong Zhan; Chengfen Xing; Cai-Yuan Pan

doi:10.1021/acsami.9b18792

CO₂-Responsive Nano-Objects with Assembly-Related Aggregation-Induced Emission and Tunable Morphologies

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2020 Jan 8;12(1):1348-1358. doi: 10.1021/acsami.9b18792. Epub 2019 Dec 23.

Authors

Liang Qiu, Haoran Zhang, Bo Wang, Yong Zhan, Chengfen Xing, Cai-Yuan Pan¹

Affiliation

¹ CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry, Department of Polymer Science and Engineering , University of Science and Technology of China , Hefei 230026 , Anhui , People's Republic of China.

PMID: 31815411
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.9b18792

Abstract

CO₂-responsive polymeric nano-objects with assembly-related aggregation-induced emission (AIE) are obtained via polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA) of 2-(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate (DMAEMA), 2-(4-formylphenoxy)ethyl methacrylate (MAEBA), and 4-(1,2,2-triphenylvinyl)phenyl methacrylate (TPEMA). These nano-objects exhibit, depending on the feed of MAEBA, a morphology evolution process from spherical micelles to vesicles. Due to the presence of DMAEMA units, CO₂ promotes morphology transformation of the nano-objects from spheres to a mixture of "jellyfish" and vesicles and vesicles to complex vesicles. Moreover, TPEMA endows the AIE feature to these nano-objects, offering a strategy to monitor the morphology evolution process in real time. Thus, this approach is significant for exploring the assembly mechanism of copolymer in polymerization-induced self-assembly and designing multistimuli-responsive polymeric nanomaterials with tunable morphologies and sizes.

Keywords: CO2 responsiveness; RAFT dispersion polymerization; aggregation-induced emission; polymeric nano-objects; polymerization-induced self-assembly; tunable morphologies.