Like-Charge PISA: Polymerization-Induced Like-Charge Electrostatic Self-Assembly

Caihui Luo; Xiyu Wang; Yuanyuan Liu; Jie Cai; Xinhua Lu; Yuanli Cai

doi:10.1021/acsmacrolett.3c00372

Like-Charge PISA: Polymerization-Induced Like-Charge Electrostatic Self-Assembly

ACS Macro Lett. 2023 Aug 15;12(8):1045-1051. doi: 10.1021/acsmacrolett.3c00372. Epub 2023 Jul 13.

Authors

Caihui Luo¹, Xiyu Wang¹, Yuanyuan Liu¹, Jie Cai¹, Xinhua Lu¹, Yuanli Cai¹

Affiliation

¹ State-Local Joint Engineering Laboratory for Novel Functional Polymer Materials, Jiangsu Engineering Laboratory of Novel Functional Polymeric Materials, Suzhou Key Laboratory of Macromolecular Design and Precision Synthesis, College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, China.

PMID: 37440526
DOI: 10.1021/acsmacrolett.3c00372

Abstract

We report the use of l-aspartic acid chiral ionic hydrogen bonds to drive liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) and precision two-dimensional electrostatic self-assembly in photo-RAFT aqueous polymerization-induced self-assembly (photo-PISA). Homopolymerization can yield salt-resistant, 3 nm ultrafine fibril-structured 5 nm ultrathin lamellae via LLPS, a left-to-right-handed chirality transition, and a droplets-to-lamellae transition. Like-charge block copolymerization leads to supercharged yet identical fibril-structured ultrathin lamellae, also, via LLPS, the left-to-right chirality transition and the droplets-to-lamellae transition. Ultrafine structures maintain intactness upon the seeded polymerization of the oppositely charged monomer. This work demonstrates that amino acid chiral ionic hydrogen bonds are powerful for the precision synthesis of salt-resistant ultrathin membrane nanomaterials.