Single-solvent facile synthesis of monodisperse sub-20 nm polymeric nanoparticles via self-assembly process

• Sub-20 nm polymeric nanoparticles are prepared through self-assembly process.
• The nanoparticles are obtained in a single solvent and on multigram scale.
• The nanoparticles are uniform in size and shape.
• The synthetic method is facile and universal.

Nanoparticles with sizes less than 20 nm present unique properties and potential applications, whereas encounter great synthetic challenges. In this work, we demonstrate a single-solvent method for facile synthesis of uniform polymeric nanoparticles in the regime of 1–20 nm. Short-chain block copolymers, such as polystyrene-b-poly(1,2-butadiene) (PS-b-PB) and polystyrene-b-poly(4-vinylpyridine) (PS-b-P4VP), directly self-assemble into micelles or reverse micelles in specific selective solvents. The following in situ crosslinking of the micelle core or corona produces a variety of extremely tiny organic nanoparticles. Representatively, sub-10 nm nanoparticles with either elastic core or corona are obtained from PS-b-PB block copolymers and sub-20 nm nanoparticles with highly stretched core and loosely packed corona are prepared from PS-b-P4VP block copolymers. These nanoparticles could show priority in the preparation of novel nanocomposites or in modeling the nanocytotoxicities.

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