writer：Yanqiu Du, Yunhan Zhang, Jing Jin, Shiyan Xiao, Haojun Liang, Wei Jiang
keywords：胶体超结构, 自锁定, 环形聚合物刷, 结构稳定性, 粒子间距
source：期刊
specific source：Macromolecules, 2023, 56(7), 2781-2789
Issue time：2023年

摘要：自组装胶体超结构的稳健性和稳定性在软凝聚态和纳米技术领域至关重要。本文利用纳米粒子上聚合物刷的拓扑结构，开发了一种“自锁定”胶体超结构的新方法，以获得优异稳定性。与线性聚合物刷相比，环形聚合物刷可显著提高超结构的结构稳定性。实验与模拟相结合表明，超结构通过环形聚合物分子间折叠缠结形成的“自锁定”机制实现显著稳定性。稳定后的超结构可在各种有机溶剂环境或加热和机械振荡条件下保持完整。此外，可通过改变水溶液中的盐浓度调控聚合物构象，从而调节超结构粒子间距。这种“自锁定”新方法无需添加化学物质即可稳定超结构并调控粒子间距，使胶体超结构在恶劣环境中的广泛应用成为可能。

Abstract：The robustness and stability of self-assembled colloidal suprastructures are pivotal and challenging in the field of soft condensed matter and nanotechnology. Herein, we develop a novel approach to self-lock the colloidal suprastructures to achieve excellent stability by taking advantage of the topology of polymer brushes on nanoparticles. Compared to linear polymer brushes, looped polymer brushes can significantly improve the structural stability of the suprastructures. A combination of experiments and simulations reveals that the suprastructures achieve their significant stabilities through a self-locking mechanism by forming folded entanglement between looped polymer molecules. The stabilized suprastructures can stay intact in various organic solvent environments or under heating and mechanical oscillations. Furthermore, the interparticle spacing of suprastructures can be modulated by controlling polymer conformations in an aqueous solution through varying salt concentrations. This new approach of self-locking provides an easy-to-operate strategy to stabilize suprastructures and modulate interparticle distances without adding chemicals, which allows the potentially wide applications of colloidal suprastructures under harsh environments.

论文链接：https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.macromol.2c01706