Hierarchically Ordered Micelles and Materials Constructed through Self-Assembly of Charged Triblock Copolymers

摘要

Fabrication of materials with well-defined internal structure at the nanoscale requires delicate arrangement of molecules in desired dimensions. The ability to manipulate molecular assembly relies greatly on the control of molecular chemistry and their assembly environment. Self assembly of block copolymers in solution presents a "bottom up" strategy by which ordered macroscopic structures are built up stepwise from the bottom of a hierarchy that includes monomer selection, chain architecture design and micellization control. In conjunction with the ongoing discovery of new chemistry, significant effort has been focused on developing micelles with controlled shape and size.~(1-4) Although much is known about building principles of micelles with various packing geometries, the interaction and aggregation behavior between these separate nano-objects is relatively less studied. Such aggregation in most cases would lead to formation of micron-sized round shape colloids, or macroscopically separate phases, due to lack of anisotropy of assembled nanostructures.