Hybrid nanostructured particles via surfactant-free double miniemulsion polymerization

Yongliang Zhao, Junli Liu, Zhi Chen, Xiaomin Zhu () and Martin Möller ()
Additional contact information
Yongliang Zhao: DWI – Leibniz-Institute for Interactive Materials e.V., Institute for Technical and Macromolecular Chemistry of RWTH Aachen University
Junli Liu: DWI – Leibniz-Institute for Interactive Materials e.V., Institute for Technical and Macromolecular Chemistry of RWTH Aachen University
Zhi Chen: DWI – Leibniz-Institute for Interactive Materials e.V., Institute for Technical and Macromolecular Chemistry of RWTH Aachen University
Xiaomin Zhu: DWI – Leibniz-Institute for Interactive Materials e.V., Institute for Technical and Macromolecular Chemistry of RWTH Aachen University
Martin Möller: DWI – Leibniz-Institute for Interactive Materials e.V., Institute for Technical and Macromolecular Chemistry of RWTH Aachen University

Nature Communications, 2018, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Double emulsions are complex fluid systems, in which droplets of a dispersed liquid phase contain even smaller dispersed liquid droplets. Particularly, water-in-oil-in-water double emulsions provide significant advantages over simple oil-in-water emulsions for microencapsulation, such as carrier of both aqueous and oily payloads and sustained release profile. However, double emulsions are thermodynamically unstable systems consisting typically of relatively large droplets. Here we show that nanoscale water-in-oil-in-water double emulsions can be prepared by adding a silica precursor polymer, hyperbranched polyethoxysiloxane, to the oil phase without any additional surfactants. The resulting double miniemulsions are transformed to robust water@SiO2@polymer@SiO2 nanocapsules via conversion of the precursor to silica and polymerization of the oil phase. Other intriguing nanostructures like nanorattles and Janus-like nanomushrooms can also be obtained by changing preparation conditions. This simple surfactant-free double miniemulsion polymerization technique opens a promising avenue for mass production of various complex hybrid nanostructures that are amenable to numerous applications.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04320-7 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-04320-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-04320-7

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().