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Polymersome formation by solvent annealing-induced structural reengineering under 3D soft confinement

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Abstract

A solvent annealing-induced structural reengineering approach is exploited to fabricate polymersomes from block copolymers that are hard to form vesicles through the traditional solution self-assembly route. More specifically, polystyrene-b-poly(4-vinyl pyridine) (PS-b-P4VP) particles with sphere-within-sphere structure (SS particles) are prepared by three-dimensional (3D) soft-confined assembly through emulsion-solvent evaporation, followed by 3D soft-confined solvent annealing upon the SS particles in aqueous dispersions for structural engineering. A water-miscible solvent (e.g., THF) is employed for annealing, which results in dramatic transitions of the assemblies, e.g., from SS particles to polymersomes. This approach works for PS-b-P4VP in a wide range of block ratios. Moreover, this method enables effective encapsulation/loading of cargoes such as fluorescent dyes and metal nanoparticles, which offers a new route to prepare polymersomes that could be applied for cargo release, diagnostic imaging, and nanoreactor, etc.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52003094), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2020kfyXJJS011). We also acknowledge HUST Analytical and Testing Center for providing characterization services.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Material Chemistry for Energy Conversion and Storage of Ministry of Education (HUST), and State Key Laboratory of Materials Processing and Die & Mold Technology, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan, 430074, China

    Xi Mao, Hao Li, Shuai Deng, Renhua Deng & Jintao Zhu

  2. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, 34141, Republic of Korea

    Jinwoo Kim & Bumjoon J. Kim

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  1. Xi Mao
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  2. Hao Li
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  3. Jinwoo Kim
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  4. Shuai Deng
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  5. Renhua Deng
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  7. Jintao Zhu
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Correspondence to Renhua Deng or Jintao Zhu.

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Mao, X., Li, H., Kim, J. et al. Polymersome formation by solvent annealing-induced structural reengineering under 3D soft confinement. Nano Res. 14, 4644–4649 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3396-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3396-x

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