The innovation engine for new materials

Maria Trujillo

Maria Trujillo

Major: 

Chemical Engineering

Mentor(s): 

Dr. Jason Spruell

Faculty Sponsor(s): 

Professor Craig Hawker

Faculty Sponsor's Department(s): 

Materials

Project Title: 

Self Assembling of PI-b-PS Copolymer Nanoperticles into Spheres and Nanodisks

Project Description: 

Block copolymers that can spontaneously phase separate into a variety of ordered nanostructures have attracted significant interest due to their great potential in fields ranging from the fabrication of nanoporous thin films to drug delivery. Recently we have developed an interest in their potential to produce secondary self-assembled nano objects, such as nanodiscs, that could further our understanding of catalysis and higher order self-assembly. To help advance the study, we synthesized self ordering block copolymers composed of polystyrene (PS) and polyisoprene (PI). PI-b-PS, covalently joined by a disulfide bond, was constructed to form phase-separated nanoparticles, through a five step synthesis utilizing DCC couplings to produce a macroinitiating RAFT agent. The synthesized PI-b-PS block copolymer was induced to self-assemble by simply dissolving it in THF and diluted with water. Due to the polymers hydrophobic properties, they self-assembled into spherical nanoparticles which have internal morphology determined from the diblock copolymer composition. We analyzed these nanoparticles using both transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The next step is to cleave the PI-b-PS copolymers housed within the self-assembled structures and analyze via TEM. In the future we hope to obtain nanodiscs after the first cleavage which can later be used for subsequent functionalization as well as to help further understand the mechanism of these self assembling polymer nanostructures.