Increased Oxygen Solubility in Aqueous Media Using PEG–Poly-2,2,2-trifluoroethyl Methacrylate Copolymer Micelles and Their Potential Application As Volume Expanders and as an Artificial Blood Product

One of the most important functions of blood is to solubilize and distribute oxygen within the body. As such, it is vital that this property is replicated (safely) by any artificial blood product. In this paper, we describe the facile synthesis of a series of simple diblock polymers capable of self-assembling into micellar structures at concentrations around 3 × 10–3 mg/mL. Using a dissolved oxygen meter, we were able to demonstrate that aqueous solutions of these aggregated structures could retain higher amounts oxygen and release it (into the aqueous bulk phase). The increased oxygen retention was quantified by measuring the rate of oxygen release and its half-life. These experiments indicated that oxygen retention/binding was dependent on the fluorine concentration. 19F NMR experiments on a micellar solution saturated with oxygen showed small upfield shifts in the fluorine peaks, which provided qualitative evidence that indicated oxygen binding occurred within the fluorine region of the polymer aggregates. Using a modified enzyme/glucose oxidation assay, we were able to establish that the aqueous oxygen concentrations were 33% higher in a solution of polymer.