Evaporation-induced confinement assembly of functional terpolymer microparticles: A combined experimental and theoretical approach

• Applicants: Professor Dr. André Gröschel; Professor Dr. Arash Nikoubashman
• Subject Area: Preparatory and Physical Chemistry of Polymers ; Experimental and Theoretical Physics of Polymers
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 445740352

Block copolymer (BCP) self-assembly is one of the most versatile concepts for the bottom-up design of functional nanostructures that are relevant for materials science, nanomedicine and nanotechnology. Over the past decades, BCPs have been extensively used to form thin films with nanoscale patterns or for the self-assembly of micelles in solution. However, BCPs were investigated only recently for their ability to form internally ordered microparticles through self-assembly in the confinement of drying emulsion droplets. These BCP microparticles are a new type of colloid that inherits additional properties as compared to conventional homogeneous polymer colloids, e.g., inner order, (tunable) shape-anisotropy, surface structure, and porosity. This added functionality could prove beneficial for a range of established applications and research fields, but also open entirely new fields. The formation of BCP microparticles through emulsions is of particular interest, because of its scale up potential that builds a bridge between basic re-search and technological applications.Evaporation-induced confinement assembly (EICA) of BCP microparticles is a promising but still relatively unexplored field, which has so far focused exclusively on the assembly of AB diblock copolymers. In this work, we take the next step and investigate ABC triblock terpolymers, since these macromolecules exhibit a considerably larger morphological diversity. In previous joint and preliminary works, we also identified marked differences between the behavior of AB diblock co-polymers and ABC triblock terpolymers, which underlines the need for a more profound under-standing of these systems. However, knowledge about the more complex interplay of interactions and non-equilibrium stages during microparticle formation is almost non-existent. With the proposed project we seek to close this knowledge gap through a concerted approach of experiment and theory, and thereby improve our general understanding of confinement assembly of BCPs. We will systematically analyze the effect of processing parameters on established ABC triblock terpolymer systems and rationalize the results with existing as well as newly de-vised modeling strategies. We will transfer terpolymer microphases into functional terpolymer microparticles (TMPs), and explore their rich morphological space. We foresee relevance of TMPs for the synthesis of soft patchy (and Janus) micro- and nanoparticles, in photonics, for storage and release of organic molecules, and energy applications.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants