Self-Assembly of Inorganic Nanoparticle Vesicles and Tubules Driven by Tethered Linear Block Copolymers

Jie He, Yijing Liu, Taarika Babu, Zengjiang Wei, and Zhihong Nie Journal of the American Chemical Society 2012 134 (28), 11342-11345

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/ja3032295

 

This article investigates the self assembly of gold nanoparticles that are coated with amphiphillic block copolymers (PS-PEO). These amphiphillic colloidal molecules (ACMs) self assemble into well defined vesciles and tubules when rehydrated in water depending on the relative size of the gold nanoparticles and the size of the PS block. The authors found that when R₀/d_Au < 0.5, vesicle formation was favorable whereas when R₀/d_Au = 0.5, tubules were favored. When R₀/d_Au > 0.5, the AMCs precipitated and could not be rehydrated.