Byard, S.J., O'Brien, C.T., Derry, M.J. et al. (4 more authors) (2020) Unique aqueous self-assembly behavior of a thermoresponsive diblock copolymer. Chemical Science, 11 (2). pp. 396-402. ISSN 2041-6520
Abstract
It is well-recognized that block copolymer self-assembly in solution typically produces spheres, worms or vesicles, with the relative volume fraction of each block dictating the copolymer morphology. Stimulus-responsive diblock copolymers that can undergo either sphere/worm or vesicle/worm transitions are also well-documented. Herein we report a new amphiphilic diblock copolymer that can form spheres, worms, vesicles or lamellae in aqueous solution. Such self-assembly behavior is unprecedented for a single diblock copolymer of fixed composition yet is achieved simply by raising the solution temperature from 1 °C (spheres) to 25 °C (worms) to 50 °C (vesicles) to 70 °C (lamellae). Heating increases the degree of hydration (and hence the effective volume fraction) of the core-forming block, with this parameter being solely responsible for driving the sphere-to-worm, worm-to-vesicle and vesicle-to-lamellae transitions. The first two transitions exhibit excellent reversibility but the vesicle-to-lamellae transition exhibits hysteresis on cooling. This new thermoresponsive diblock copolymer provides a useful model for studying such morphological transitions and is likely to be of significant interest for theoretical studies.
Metadata
Authors/Creators: |
|
||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 The Author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. | ||||||||
Dates: |
|
||||||||
Institution: | The University of Sheffield | ||||||||
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Chemistry (Sheffield) | ||||||||
Funding Information: |
|
||||||||
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield | ||||||||
Date Deposited: | 27 Jan 2020 15:05 | ||||||||
Last Modified: | 27 Jan 2020 15:05 | ||||||||
Status: | Published | ||||||||
Publisher: | Royal Society of Chemistry | ||||||||
Refereed: | Yes | ||||||||
Identification Number: | https://doi.org/10.1039/c9sc04197d | ||||||||
Related URLs: |