Contributed
Tuning the size and composition of nanohydrogels using a "phantom monomer" for biological applications

Nanohydrogels have attracted considerable interest over the last few years due to their unique properties and behaviors. We designed a series of nanohydrogels generated from mixtures of N-isopropylacrylamide, di-block (hydrophilic-hydrophobic) and tri-block (hydrophobic-hydrophilic-hydrophobic) copolymer acrylamide macro-monomer. When the monomers are mixed at high temperature they collapse into well defined self-assemblies, which can be further polymerized leading to particles with similar size as the intermediate self-assemblies ^1-4. The size of the self-assemblies can be tuned/calibrated by combining different ratios of the starting monomers mixtures at high temperature. As a way for having more evidences for this self-assembly mediated mechanism, we designed a panel of experiments using "phantom monomers". “Phantom monomers” are the closest structure that mimics the structure of a monomer but lacks the active function for polymerization”. By definition, the self-assembly will be similar for both classical and phantom systems, however, upon polymerizing, different materials will be generated since the phantom is excluded form the polymerization. The comparative parallel analyses of the classical and phantom systems not only put in evidence the self-assembly mediated mechanism , but also prove the generation of new materials.

References

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