Synthesis of thermoresponsive silica nanoparticle/PNIPAM hybrids by aqueous surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization

This paper described the synthesis of a novel kind of thermoresponsive silica nanoparticle/PNIPAM hybrids by aqueous surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization at room temperature. These resulting hybrid particles were characterized by FT-IR, XPS, TEM, TGA and variable temperature DLS which indicated that they owned both core/shell structures and thermoresponsiveness.