Abstract
AbstractWe report on the synthesis of monodisperse, flower‐like, liquid crystalline (LC) polymer particles by precipitation polymerization of a LC mixture consisting of benzoic acid‐functionalized acrylates and disulfide‐functionalized diacrylates. Introduction of a minor amount of redox‐responsive disulfide‐functionalized diacrylates (≤10 wt %) induced the formation of flower‐like shapes. The shape of the particles can be tuned from flower‐ to disk‐like to spherical by elevating the polymerization temperature. The solvent environment also has a pronounced effect on the particle size. Time‐resolved TEM reveals that the final particle morphology was formed in the early stages of the polymerization and that subsequent polymerization resulted in continued particle growth without affecting the morphology. Finally, the degradation of the particles under reducing conditions was much faster for flower‐like particles than for spherical particles, likely a result of their higher surface‐to‐volume ratio.
Highlights
Shape-anisotropic colloids are of great interest across a wide range of scientific disciplines and application areas
We report on the synthesis of monodisperse, flowerlike, liquid crystalline (LC) polymer particles by precipitation polymerization of a LC mixture consisting of benzoic acidfunctionalized acrylates and disulfide-functionalized diacrylates
The glass transition temperature (Tg) of the LC polymer particles was determined by Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and found to be around 82 8C (Figure S6)
Summary
Shape-anisotropic colloids are of great interest across a wide range of scientific disciplines and application areas. Templated or confined geometric synthetic routes, such as photolithography,[27,28] particle replication in non-wetting templates (PRINT),[29] and droplet-based microfluidic routes,[30,31] can bring results These methods offer direct control of morphology, they face difficulties as the dimension of the particles decreases to sub-micron range; in addition, the low productivity and stringent preparation conditions remain challenging. Moradi Laboratory of Physical Chemistry, Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, Eindhoven University of Technology Groene Loper 3, 5612 AE, Eindhoven (The Netherlands). Heuts Supramolecular Polymer Chemistry group, Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, Eindhoven University of Technology Groene Loper 3, 5612 AE, Eindhoven (The Netherlands). Degradation of the particles by breaking the disulfide groups under reducing conditions is dramatically accelerated in the flower-like particles, attributed to their high surface-tovolume ratio
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