Polyaniline (PANI) latex particles have been synthesized using both inverse and direct miniemulsion polymerization techniques. It is shown that inverse miniemulsions of anilinium hydrochloride can be oxidized by simple H 2O2, thus resulting under optimized conditions in highly crystalline PANI particles dispersed in hydrocarbons with high volume fraction. The resulting structure is identified as emeraldine, which however crystallizes in a new crystal morphology. Oxidation of aniline miniemulsions in water with diverse oxidants from the continuous phase also leads to highly crystalline PANI, which however has a low colloidal stability. Additional employment of a costabilizer in this case leads to stable aqueous PANI dispersions with for water-based systems otherwise unreached local structural order.

There's an APP for that: cell-repellent APP (azido-[polylysine-g-PEG]) is used to create substrates for spatially controlled dynamic cell adhesion. The simple addition of a functional peptide to the culture medium rapidly triggers cell adhesion. This highly accessible yet powerful technique allows diverse applications, demonstrated through tissue motility assays, patterned coculturing and triggered cell shape change.

The potential of chitosan as an emulsion stabilizer is combined with the miniemulsion technique to generate oil droplets, hollow capsules, and latex particles in the diameter range of 100-300 nm carrying a functional biopolymer surface. It turned out that chitosan alone, independent of its molecular weight, is just moderately efficient, which is speculatively attributed to its stiff polysaccharide structure. The addition of biocompatible costabilizers with higher flexibility either to the oil phase or to the water phase, such as Jeffamine or Gluadin (a peptide), eliminates these deficiencies, and very small nanocapsules made of biopolymer hybrids can be obtained. NMR analysis shows that the costabilizer is effectively grafted/cross-linked to the chitosan which makes the miniemulsion route also effective for the modification of hard-to-handle, amphiphilic biopolymers either from the water or from the oil phase.