Photo-PISA: Shedding Light on Polymerization-Induced Self-Assembly

Jianbo Tan; Hao Sun; Mingguang Yu; Brent S Sumerlin; Li Zhang

doi:10.1021/acsmacrolett.5b00748

Photo-PISA: Shedding Light on Polymerization-Induced Self-Assembly

ACS Macro Lett. 2015 Nov 17;4(11):1249-1253. doi: 10.1021/acsmacrolett.5b00748. Epub 2015 Oct 26.

Authors

Jianbo Tan¹, Hao Sun², Mingguang Yu³, Brent S Sumerlin², Li Zhang¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Polymeric Materials and Engineering, School of Materials and Energy, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China.
² George and Josephine Butler Polymer Research Laboratory, Center for Macromolecular Science and Engineering, Department of Chemistry, University of Florida, P.O. Box 117200, Gainesville, Florida, United States.
³ Key Laboratory for Polymeric Composite and Functional Materials of Ministry of Education, and Key Laboratory of Designed Synthesis and Application of Polymer Material, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China.

PMID: 35614822
DOI: 10.1021/acsmacrolett.5b00748

Abstract

Herein we report an aqueous photoinitiated polymerization-induced self-assembly (photo-PISA) for the preparation of a remarkably diverse set of complex polymer nanoparticle morphologies (e.g., spheres, worms, and vesicles) at room temperature. Ultrafast polymerization rates were achieved, with near quantitative monomer conversion within 15 min of visible light irradiation. An important feature of the photo-PISA is that diblock copolymer vesicles can be prepared under mild conditions (room temperature, aqueous medium, visible light), which will be important for the preparation of functional vesicles loaded with biorelated species (e.g., proteins). As a proof of concept, silica nanoparticles and bovine serum albumin (BSA) were encapsulated in situ within vesicles via the photo-PISA process.