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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