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Obtention of Giant Unilamellar Hybrid Vesicles by Electroformation and Measurement of their Mechanical Properties by Micropipette Aspiration

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Relationship between wall thickness and size in block copolymer vesicles.

Lie Ma¹, Adi Eisenberg

¹Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, PR China.

Langmuir : the ACS Journal of Surfaces and Colloids

|May 12, 2009

Summary

Block copolymer vesicles exhibit size-dependent wall thickness, decreasing as vesicle size shrinks. This phenomenon offers a new stabilization mechanism for small vesicles where chain segregation is insufficient.

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Anionic Polymerization of an Amphiphilic Copolymer for Preparation of Block Copolymer Micelles Stabilized by π-π Stacking Interactions

Anionic Polymerization of an Amphiphilic Copolymer for Preparation of Block Copolymer Micelles Stabilized by π-π Stacking Interactions

Published on: October 10, 2016

Area of Science:

Polymer Science
Materials Science
Nanotechnology

Background:

Block copolymer vesicles are self-assembled structures with potential applications in drug delivery and nanotechnology.
Understanding their structural properties, such as wall thickness, is crucial for controlling their behavior.
Previous studies have focused on factors like block length and composition, but the size-dependent wall thickness phenomenon requires further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the size-dependent behavior of wall thickness in polystyrene-b-poly-(acrylic acid) (PS-b-PAA) block copolymer vesicles.
To explore the influence of polymer block length and additives on this size-dependent phenomenon.
To propose a new stabilization mechanism for small vesicles based on wall thickness variation.

Main Methods:

Synthesis and characterization of four different PS-b-PAA block copolymers.
Preparation of block copolymer vesicles.
Determination of vesicle size and wall thickness using transmission electron microscopy (TEM).
Analysis of the relationship between vesicle size and wall thickness under various conditions (e.g., presence of NaCl, HCl, NaOH).

Main Results:

A novel phenomenon of decreasing vesicle wall thickness with decreasing vesicle size was observed.
The strength of this size dependence varied with the length of the poly-(acrylic acid) (PAA) block.
Additives like NaCl and HCl altered the size-dependence behavior by modifying electrostatic repulsions.
An inverse relationship between wall thickness and size was observed for larger vesicles (>300 nm) in the presence of NaCl, attributed to external corona chain repulsion.

Conclusions:

The size-dependent decrease in wall thickness serves as a stabilization mechanism for very small block copolymer vesicles.
This mechanism becomes significant when chain segregation is insufficient for stabilization.
The findings provide insights into the self-assembly behavior of block copolymers and their potential for tunable nanostructures.