Structure Control of Oblate Nanoparticles Self-Assembled by ABC Cyclic Terpolymers under Soft Confinement

The self-assembly behavior of cyclic A₁₂B₁₂C₁₂ terpolymers under 3D soft confinement were studied using Monte Carlo simulation. The simulation results indicate that under neutral boundary conditions, the cyclic A₁₂B₁₂C₁₂ terpolymers self-assemble into nanoparticles with intriguing ordered inner nanostructures, i.e., each component forms hexagonally packed short cylinders arranged in the nanoparticles. It is worth noting that the overall shape of those nanostructured particles can be tuned via changing the interfacial interactions between different blocks (ε_PP) and the interfacial interactions between the terpolymers and solvents (ε_PS), and the nearly flat oblate nanoparticles can be obtained in the case of large ε_PP while small ε_PS. In addition, via changing the confinement degree, the number of short cylinders in the particles can be easily tuned, which leads to the formation of oblate nanoparticles with various internal nanostructures, and core-multi-petal oblate nanoparticles with one component forming the core and the other two components forming the petals can be obtained when the confinement degree is relatively strong. It should be noted that the core-forming component in the core-multi-petal nanoparticles can be easily tuned via introducing the selectivity of the solvents. Our simulation results indicate that the cyclic ABC terpolymers is a good candidate for the preparation of oblate nanoparticles with controllable inner nanostructures.