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.

Inspired by the "lotus effect", we proposed a facile synthetic route toward raspberry-like PS@SiO 2 microspheres, which further lead to superhydrophobic surfaces. In this approach, monodispersed polystyrene (PS) microspheres were first synthesized via dispersion polymerization using polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as stabilizer. The obtained PS microspheres were then used as template microspheres for biomimetic silification using tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) as precursor. Upon adjusting the molecular weight of PVP and the concentration of NH 3 $H 2 O, the surface roughness of PS@SiO 2 microspheres can be well controlled. Furthermore, after hydrophobization treatment, by dropcasting the raspberry-like PS@SiO 2 microspheres onto a glass slide, dual-scale films were obtained, which had a similar surface morphology to that of the lotus leaf, exhibiting a water contact angle of 163.3 and water contact angle hysteresis of 4 . In addition, the oil-water separation ability of hydrophobic raspberry microsphere treated steel mesh was investigated. The results demonstrated excellent oil-water separation efficiency and reusability. This facile and robust synthesis technique for constructing a superhydrophobic surface hold great potential application in versatile and large-scale oilwater separation.

Photoluminescent materials have been applied worldwide in anticounterfeiting and security fields due to their unique performance of better security, easy identification, and difficulty of duplication. Herein, a facile, green, and low-cost strategy to fabricate biomass-based composites composed of lanthanide rare earth ions-doped nanocrystals and cellulose fibers for anticounterfeiting application was presented. The photoluminescent materials were prepared via in situ chemical deposition of rare earth ions onto bleached hardwood pulp cellulose fibers (bhp­Fibers) surface using polyvinyl­pyrrolidone (PVP) as coupling agent, forming bhpFibers-PVP@­LaF3:Eu3+ composites. The bhp­Fibers-PVP@­LaF3:Eu3+ composites showed excellent luminescence, and their fluorescence intensity can be simply controlled by varying the addition of the right amount of lanthanum (La3+) and europium (Eu3+) ions in aqueous medium. Furthermore, the composites have been used as blocks to form photoluminescence paper via a suction filtration procedure. The as-prepared paper possessed excellent luminescence, high flexibility, well writable and printable properties. Moreover, the whole procedure was carried out in a mild environment without toxic reagents. This simple, green, and low-cost technology presented has advantages of wholesale production of biomass-based photoluminescent materials for anticounterfeiting applications.

The location of RAFT groups plays a key role for the living polymerization process and the formation of nano-objects in RAFT dispersion polymerization.

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