Title
In-situ liquid phase imaging of block copolymer vesicle assembly
Conference Dates
July 31-August 4, 2017
Abstract
Amphiphilic block copolymers in aqueous solution can assemble into various ordered molecular architectures,
which have a wide range of applications in, for example, drug delivery and catalytic nanoreactors.1 While sustained efforts, both experimentally and theoretically, have been made to better understand the mechanism of self- assembly in order to gain more control over this process,2, 3 there has never been a real-time, real space investigation of the assembly process on the nanoscale. Here we show the first observation of block copolymer vesicle assembly via the solvent switch protocol4 using liquid phase transmission electron microscopy (LP-TEM). We also discuss the different mechanisms of self-assembly with the ex-situ cryo-TEM observation and compare them with self-consistent field (SCF) lattice calculations. Our findings illustrate the ability of LP-TEM to implement quantitative visualization of local formation process of the block copolymer vesicles to reveal the formation mechanism on an individual particle level
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Recommended Citation
Hanglong Wu, Alessandro Ianiro, Joseph P. Patterson, Nico A. J. M. Sommerdijk, Remco Tuinier, Heiner Friedrich, C. Esteves, A. Catarina, Arthur Keizer, and Mark van Rijt, "In-situ liquid phase imaging of block copolymer vesicle assembly" in "Association in Solution IV", Ulf Olsson, Lund University, Sweden Norman Wagner, University of Delaware, USA Anand Yethiraj, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada Eds, ECI Symposium Series, (2017). https://dc.engconfintl.org/assoc_solution_iv/13