Nanogels hold promise as soft and functional carriers and nanoreactors,but whether they will ever reach the stage of large-scale application depends crucially on efficient production methods,and on what interesting pr...Nanogels hold promise as soft and functional carriers and nanoreactors,but whether they will ever reach the stage of large-scale application depends crucially on efficient production methods,and on what interesting properties and functionalities they can have.In particular,nanogels consisting of highly charged polyelectrolyte have not yet been very much explored.Here,the authors present a novel and generic strategy for controlled and efficient synthesis of a large diversity of polyelectrolyte nanogels.The method is based on polymerizing an ionic monomer in the presence of an oppositely charged polyion-neutral diblock copolymer as template,while adding a cross-linker.The growing polymer chains assemble with the template,forming polyion complex micelles,which dissociate upon increasing salt concentration.Subsequent separation yields nanogels with well-controlled size and properties,and free template polymers that can be used again.Our design can be applied generally to a wide range of both cationic and anionic monomers,as well as various cross-linkers.Scaled-up production presents no problems as increasing monomer concentration(hundreds of mM)and reaction volume(up to 1 L)hardly compromise product quality.Moreover,the obtained nanogels with their well-controlled size,morphology,chemistry,and cross-linking degree perform well as soft nanocarriers and catalytic nanoreactors.展开更多
基金project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos.51278448 and 51478414)the National High-Tech R&D Program of China(863 Program)(Nos.2011AA060907 and 2012AA051502)the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education(No.20110101110018),China
基金supported by the 1000 Foreign Experts Program(no.WQ20163100341)the Shanghai Municipal Natural Science Foundation(nos.17ZR1440500 and 18490740100)d the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(no.222201714003).
文摘Nanogels hold promise as soft and functional carriers and nanoreactors,but whether they will ever reach the stage of large-scale application depends crucially on efficient production methods,and on what interesting properties and functionalities they can have.In particular,nanogels consisting of highly charged polyelectrolyte have not yet been very much explored.Here,the authors present a novel and generic strategy for controlled and efficient synthesis of a large diversity of polyelectrolyte nanogels.The method is based on polymerizing an ionic monomer in the presence of an oppositely charged polyion-neutral diblock copolymer as template,while adding a cross-linker.The growing polymer chains assemble with the template,forming polyion complex micelles,which dissociate upon increasing salt concentration.Subsequent separation yields nanogels with well-controlled size and properties,and free template polymers that can be used again.Our design can be applied generally to a wide range of both cationic and anionic monomers,as well as various cross-linkers.Scaled-up production presents no problems as increasing monomer concentration(hundreds of mM)and reaction volume(up to 1 L)hardly compromise product quality.Moreover,the obtained nanogels with their well-controlled size,morphology,chemistry,and cross-linking degree perform well as soft nanocarriers and catalytic nanoreactors.
