Polymer vesicles, also known as polymersomes, have garnered a lot of interest even before the first report of their fabrication in the mid‐1990s. These capsules have found applications in areas such as drug delivery, diagnostics and cellular models, and are made via the self‐assembly of amphiphilic block copolymers, predominantly with soft, rubbery hydrophobic segments. Comparatively, and despite their remarkable impermeability, glassy polymersomes (GPs) have been less pervasive due to their rigidity, lack of biodegradability and more restricted fabrication strategies. GPs are now becoming more prominent, thanks to their ability to undergo stable shape‐change (e.g., into non‐spherical morphologies) as a response to a predetermined trigger (e.g., light, solvent). The basics of block copolymer self‐assembly with an emphasis on polymersomes and GPs in particular are reviewed here. The principles and advantages of shape transformation of GPs as well as their general usefulness are also discussed, together with some of the challenges and opportunities currently facing this area.
We used osmotic pressure changes to induce shape transformation in glassy polymersomes from crosslinkable ABA triblock copolymers. We observed that both the speed of osmotic pressure changes and order of crosslinking affect shape change behavior.
In article number https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.201802734, Yoan C. Simon and co‐workers review the fabrication and usefulness of glassy polymersomes. Capitalizing on their noteworthy impermeability, rigidity, versatile assembly behavior, and readily available shape transformation, many groups have embarked on an exciting scientific journey to generate unique vesicular constructs, which could one day serve as cell mimics.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.