A novel giant surfactant, possessing a well-defined hydrophilic tail and a hydrophobic head with rigid multiple conjugate chains, tadpole-like copolymer with polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane core (P9-1), had been designed and synthesized via aminolysis/addition, interfacial oxidation polymerization. It was used to form complex micelles with polysulfides (PSL) for constructing the silica microspheres with micrometer dimensions in a simplified one-pot synthesis. The characterization results for the morphologies of the complex micelles and the resulting microspheres indicated that the introduction of conjugated segments and steric hindrance of hybrid cage contributes to promote the stability and provide larger core space of the self-assembled micelle to accommodate more PSL. With increasing the PSL/P9-1 feed ratio, the size of microspheres and the content of PSL in the resulting microsphere were increased due to the PSL droplets providing a soft-template for silica particles to build larger-sized silica microspheres with PSL cores. And the growth mechanism of microstructures was also proposed in evaporation synthetic procedures, especially for special hollow morphology.
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