Dynamic light scattering, potentiometric titration, transmission electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy have been used to investigate the micellar behaviour and metal-nanoparticle formation in poly(ethylene oxide)-block-poly(2-vinylpyridine), PEO-b-P2VP, poly(hexa(ethylene glycol) methacrylate)-block-poly(2-(diethylamino)ethyl methacrylate), PHEGMA-b-PDEAEMA, and PEO-b-PDEAEMA amphiphilic diblock copolymers in water. The hydrophobic block of these copolymers (P2VP or PDEAEMA) is pH-sensitive: at low pH it can be protonated and becomes partially or completely hydrophilic leading to molecular solubility whereas at higher pH micelles are formed. These micelles consist of a P2VP or PDEAEMA core and a PEO or PHEGMA corona, respectively, where the core forming amine units can incorporate metal compounds due to coordination. The metal compounds (e.g., H2PtCl6, K2PtCl6) can either be introduced in a micellar solution, where they are incorporated within the micelle core via coordination with functional groups, or can be added to a unimer solution at low pH, where they lead to a metal-induced micellization. In these micellar nanoreactors, metal nanoparticles nucleate and grow upon reduction with sizes in the range of a few nanometers as observed by TEM. The effect of the metal incorporation method on the characteristics of the micelles and of the synthesized nanoparticles is investigated.

The paper provides new insights into the structure of Pt-containing diblock and triblock copolymers based on poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) and poly(4-vinylpyridine) (P4VP), using a combination of atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and anomalous small-angle X-ray scattering (ASAXS). Parallel studies using methods contributing supplemental structural information allowed us to comprehensively characterize sophisticated polymer systems during metalation and to exclude possible ambiguity of the data interpretation of each of the methods. AFM and TEM make available the determination of sizes of the micelles and of the Pt-containing micelle cores, respectively, while a combination of XRD, TEM, and ASAXS reveals Pt-nanoparticle size distributions and locations along with the structural information about the polymer matrix. In addition, for the first time, ASAXS revealed the organization of Pt-nanoparticle-filled diblock and triblock copolymers in the bulk. The nanoparticle characteristics are mainly determined by the type of block copolymer system in which they are found: larger particles (2.0-3.0 nm) are formed in triblock copolymer micelles, while smaller ones (1.5-2.5 nm) are found in diblock copolymer micelles. This can be explained by facilitated intermicellar exchange in triblock copolymer systems. For both systems, Pt nanoparticles have narrow particle size distributions as a result of a strong interaction between the nanoparticle surface and the P4VP units inside the micelle cores. The pH of the medium mainly influences the particle location rather than the particle size. A structural model of Pt-nanoparticle clustering in the diblock PEO-b-P4VP and triblock P4VP-b-PEO-b-P4VP copolymers in the bulk was constructed ab initio from the ASAXS data. This model reveals that nearly spherical micellar cores of about 10 nm in diameter (filled with Pt nanoparticles) aggregate forming slightly oblate hollow bodies with an outer diameter of about 40 nm.