Crystallization-Driven Self-Assembly-Substrated-Polymerization-Induced Self-Assembly (CDSA-s-PISA). Toward the Next...

All the objects that surround us can be seen as combinations of elementary shapes like spheres, rods, and squares that perform complex tasks when connected in a well-defined manner. While making a device by assembling those shapes remains relatively easy at the human scale, it is extremely challenging to do so at the nanoscale, due to the difficulty to covalently attach at a defined position a nano-object with a given shape to another one of different geometry. To circumvent this hurdle, here, we introduce an innovative approach that consists in performing polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA) onto core-crystalline micelles prepared by crystallization-driven self-assembly (CDSA). Because of the intrinsic properties of CDSA, one can construct one- or two-dimensional substrates to initiate PISA at very specific locations. Performing CDSA-substrated-PISA (CDSA-s-PISA) onto triblock co-micelles where only the central block was PISA active, led to the formation of elongated structures bearing one or two beads on their central parts, while CDSA-s-PISA on entirely PISA active micelles and in presence of free macro-CTA, allowed the preparation of uniform elongated micelles fully decorated with beads. These results offer a sneak peek of what the next generation of multitasks polymeric assemblies will be.