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Updated: Jun 21, 2026

Self-assembling Morphologies Obtained from Helical Polycarbodiimide Copolymers and Their Triazole Derivatives
Published on: February 7, 2017
Vesicles as soft templates for the enzymatic polymerization of aniline
Zengwei Guo1, Heinz Rüegger, Reinhard Kissner
1Department of Materials, ETH Zürich, Wolfgang-Pauli-Str. 10, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
Abstract:
The feasibility of using surfactant vesicles as soft templates for the peroxidase-triggered polymerization of aniline was investigated. It was found that mixed anionic vesicles (diameter approximately 80 nm) composed of sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate (SDBS) and decanoic acid (1:1, molar ratio) are promising templates. In the presence of the vesicles and horseradish peroxidase/hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) as initiator system, aniline polymerizes under optimized conditions at pH=4.3 to the desired conductive emeraldine form of polyaniline (PANI). The optimal polymerization conditions were elaborated, and some of the chemical and physicochemical aspects of the reaction system were investigated. After addition of aniline and peroxidase to the vesicles, aniline is only loosely associated with the vesicles, as shown by NOESY-NMR and zeta potential measurements. In contrast, the peroxidase strongly binds to the vesicle surface, as shown by fluorescence measurements using TNS (2-(p-toluidino)naphthalene-6-sulfonate) as vesicle membrane probe. This binding of the enzyme to the vesicle surface indicates that the polymerization reaction is initiated predominantly on the surface of the vesicles. Cryo-transmission electron microscopy indicates that the polymerization product remains associated with the vesicles on their surface. For short reaction times (30 s
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