Constructing patches on colloidal nanoparticles is one of the effective strategies for producing anisotropic building blocks for superstructures. Patches on the surface of nanoparticles can be directional bonding parts to connect nanoparticles into self-assembled superstructures such as clusters, vesicles, and chains. We recently demonstrated patch formation in nanoscale with spherical micelles of PS-b-P4VP diblock copolymers. Patchy micelles had well-defined numbers of patches and were organized into supracolloidal chains with the connection of the patches on the neighboring micelles. In this presentation, we investigated the patch formation on spherical micelles of PS-b-P2VP diblock copolymers, which were synthesized using RAFT polymerization. We first induced a series of spherical micelles in a selective solvent of the P2VP block by varying the block ratio as well as the molecular weight of copolymers. After crosslinking the core block, patches on the micelles were induced by changing the solvent preferable to the core but still compatible with the corona in order to segregate the corona into the patches. The number of patches on the micelles was characterized in the range of one to more than 4, mainly depending on the block ratio of copolymers.

Patch formation on diblock copolymer micelles for nanoscale building blocks

256th National Meeting (2018)

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