Investigating the Effect of Hydrophilic Block Length on the Co-Assembly Behavior of Amphiphilic Triblock Copolymers

Polymer vesicles and micelles have been of interest in the scientific community for the past few decades due to potential biomedical applications in areas such as drug delivery, nanoreactors, and biosensing. Polymer vesicles and micelles are formed through the self-assembly of amphiphilic block copolymers. The objective of this project is to gain a better understanding of the influence of hydrophilic block copolymer length and composition in controlling the resulting morphologies from the co-assembly of triblock copolymers. First, a hydrophobic block composed of poly(methyl acrylate) was synthesized using reversible addition-fragmentation chain-transfer (RAFT) polymerization mediated by a difunctional chain-transfer agent. The block was then chain-extended with hydrophilic blocks of poly (acrylic acid) of 2 different lengths. The resulting two triblocks were then co-assembled at different ratios and the structure of the co-assemblies were characterized via light scattering