Surface‐Reactive Patchy Nanoparticles and Nanodiscs Prepared by Tandem Nanoprecipitation and Internal Phase Separation

Abstract

Nanoparticles with structural or chemical anisotropy are promising materials in domains as diverse as cellular delivery, photonic materials, or interfacial engineering. The surface chemistry may play a major role in some of these contexts. Introducing reactivity into such polymeric nanomaterials is thus of great potential, yet is still a concept in its infancy. In the current contribution, a simple nanoprecipitation technique leads to nanoparticles with diameters as low as 150 nm and well-defined reactive surface patches of less than 30 nm in width, as well as surface-reactive flat, disc-like nanoparticles with corresponding dimensions, via an additional crosslinking/delamination sequence. To this aim, chemically doped block copolymers (BCPs) are employed. Control over morphology is attained by tuning preparation conditions, such as polymer concentration, solvent mixture composition, and blending with non-functional BCP. Surface reactivity is demonstrated using a modular ligation method for the site-selective immobilization of thiol molecules. The current approach constitutes a straightforward methodology requiring minimal engineering to produce nanoparticles with confined surface reactivity and/or shape anisotropy.

Making the best of it: nitroxide-mediated polymerization of methacrylatesviathe copolymerization approach with functional styrenics

“…For all experiments, we employed rather commonly encountered values in the field for the following parameters: Although it may not be the optimal ratio, we concentrated our investigations on copolymerizing 5 mol% of styrenics because (i) it was found that a rather decent control could be achieved with 4.4-8.8 mol% styrene 31 and (ii) it fits well our general goal of imparting side-chain reactivity to (block) copolymers without strongly altering their physical properties. [45][46][47] Kinetics and macromolecular control in solution…”

“…The final copolymers are particularly interesting in the development of reactive nanostructured materials based on phase-separating block copolymers involving low fractions of reactive comonomers. [45][46][47] In brief, the goal of the present article, rather than to provide an in-depth rate constant-based investigation, is to exemplify in a practical manner the opportunity to control the polymerization of methacrylates by SG1-mediated polymerization, while introducing functionality without strongly compromising initial physical properties.…”

Multifunctional Synthetic Protein Nanoparticles via Reactive Electrojetting

“…[8] Multifunctional nanoparticles have traditionally been made of synthetic polymers, such as polyethylene glycol (PEG), [9] poly(lactide-coglycolide) (PLGA), [10] or block copolymer systems. [11] Using proteins as the primary building block of nanocarriers could be an appealing alternative due to their chemical diversity, inherent biological functions, and a potentially reduced risk for immunogenicity. [12] Protein nanoparticles (PNPs) [6,12] have been pursued for drug delivery applications including the clinically approved drug Abraxane [13] and other preclinically studied candidates.…”

Synthetic advances of internally nanostructured polymer particles: From and beyond block copolymer

“…Reproduced with permission. [24] Copyright 2018, Wiley-VCH separation of functional BCPs, a straightforward, powerful method could be used to fabricate functional nano-objects for biological application.…”