Self-Assembly of Homo-Polyarylene Ether Into Reactive Matrix for Fabrication of Hybrid Functional Microparticles

Emulsion confinement self-assembly of block copolymer has witnessed increasing research interest in the recent decade, but the post-functionalization and application of the resultant polymeric micro/nano-particles are still in their infancy. In this work, a super-engineering polyarylene ether containing pendent nitrile and carboxyl (PAE-NC) has been synthesized and converted into polymeric microparticles for macromolecular enrichment via emulsion confinement self-assembly and subsequent surface modification. Moreover, the encapsulation capacity of PAE-NC was evaluated using hydrophobic fluorescent quantum dots (QD) as a functional probe. Particularly, we found that both the as-synthesized PAE-NC and its hydrolyzed derivatives could be converted into microparticles via emulsion confinement self-assembly. Furthermore, the co-self-assembly of red-emitting QD and PAE-NC enables the phase transfer of hydrophobic QD into hydrophilic luminescent microparticles with the persisted fluorescence emission. Based on these results, the current PAE-NC would be served as a versatile and robust matrix to fabricate advanced microparticles or microcapsules for various applications.