Characterizing Polymer-Grafted Nanoparticles: From Basic Defining Parameters to Behavior in Solvents and Self-Assembled Structures

Abstract

Polymer-grafted nanoparticles, often called hairy nanoparticles (HNPs), are an intriguing class of nanostructured hybrid materials with great potential in a variety of applications, including advanced polymer nanocomposite fabrication, drug delivery, imaging, and lubrication. This Feature provides an introduction to characterization of various aspects of HNPs, from basic defining parameters to behavior of HNPs in solvents and self-assembled structures of multicomponent brush nanoparticles, by using a broad range of analytical tools.

Polarized X-ray scattering measures molecular orientation in polymer-grafted nanoparticles

“…PGNs are a vibrant frontier of polymer physics, where questions of confinement, entanglement, and phase behavior are explored 5 – 7 . A key feature of modern PGN research is a focus on the impact of graft density and how it affects the conformation of chains arranged radially about the particle 6 , 8 , 9 . At high graft densities, it is expected that a concentrated polymer brush (CPB) region will form close to the particle surface.…”

Enhanced Catalytic Activity of Gold@Polydopamine Nanoreactors with Multi-compartment Structure Under NIR Irradiation

“…For materials with complex 3D nanostructures, micrographs obtained by TEM are often inconclusive as the structural features are superimposed along the electron beam direction. Electron tomography (ET) offers the possibility to overcome that limitation by obtaining a reconstruction of the object’s 3D structure from a series of two-dimensional micrographs [ 44 , 45 ]. In our study, we successfully utilized ET for the detailed structural analysis of both the porous PS- b -P2VP templates and the Au@PDA particles.…”

Nanoengineering with RAFT polymers: from nanocomposite design to applications

“…65,93 Oftentimes, the free polymers formed in solution are characterized as a substitute for the surface-anchored ones, as they are quite similar with respect to molecular weight and dispersity. 94,95 However, in many cases, grafting-from outperform graftingto approaches in terms of obtained grafting density. 35,90,91,96,97 This difference can be explained by the steric hindrance effect during the grafting-to process: the approaching polymer chain is sterically blocked by the grafted polymer chains as well as by binding site masking via random coil formation of the approaching polymers.…”