Spontaneous Self-Assembly of Vesicles from Electroactive and Photoactive Triblock Copolymers
Abstract
Surfactant and lipid vesicles and their self-assembly processes are of interest in many fields including materials science. The hollow spherical mesostructures find wide applications including drug delivery systems, cosmetics, pesticide carriers, models of biomembranes, catalysis, artificial photosynthesis, and microenvironment for template synthesis. Approaches explored to address the fragility and instability of vesicles and liposomes include polymerizable surfactants and lipids, cross-linking of the vesicles, incorporation of polymerizable monomers into the vesicles, polymeric grafts onto the amphiphilic molecules, polymer coatings, and vesicle-templated polymerization. Direct self-assembly of vesicles from polymeric amphiphiles represents an alternative strategy that could provide relatively more stable vesicles and mesostructures with novel properties and functions. In this paper we report the spontaneous self-assembly of highly stable spherical vesicles with outer diameters in the 200 nm to 200 microns range from new electroactive and photoactive, hydrogen-bonding, rod-coil-rod triblock copolymers. The conjugated polymer blocks in the vesicles are shown to form J-aggregates.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 16, 1998
- Accession Number
- ADA356423
Entities
People
- Samson A. Jenekhe
- X. L. Chen
Organizations
- University of Rochester