Polymeric micro- and nanocapsules and multicompartment systems are highly interesting in the field of nanoreactors and in mimicking biological systems and processes. Of special interest is the introduction of a stimuli-responsiveness into the capsule membrane to be able to control the traffic of small and larger compounds and particles into and out from the capsule interior. Various approaches are reported for the preparation of responsive hollow polymeric capsules based on self-assembly as well as through templating.<sup> </sup>We will report on novel highly effective templating approaches for the preparation of responsive nano- and microcapsules as well as multicompartment systems where we can fine-tune and control the membrane permeability. As advantage of the templating approach, the size of the capsules can be adjusted easily by varying the size of the silica templates. Firstly, surface grafting from silica templates making use of RAFT and ATRP polymerization will be shown to introduce pH as well as redox sensitive capsule membranes. Here, stabilization of the membrane before removal of the template has been achieved by photocrosslinking or by introducing redox-sensitive disulfide crosslinker of different chain length. In addition, we present a facile and highly effective route to construct a dual-responsive polymeric capsule with photo-crosslinkable property based on surface-initiated single electron transfer living radical polymerization (SI-SET-LRP). Similar dual-responsive nanoreactors were also achieved by a layer-by-layer templating approach which was even further expanded to a multicompartment system integrating polymersomes into the capsules by an innovative host-guest approach.

Responsive nanocapsules and synthetic multicompartments as cell mimics

2019 Fall National Meeting

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.