Recent developments concerning a promising “seeded growth” route to well-defined 1D and 2D particles and hierarchical assemblies termed “living” crystallization-driven self-assembly (CDSA), will be described. Living CDSA is analogous to living covalent (e.g. anion initiated) polymerizations of molecular monomers but on a much longer length scale (typically, 10 nm – 5 microns) and also shows analogies to biological “nucleation-elongation” processes such as amyloid fiber growth.<br/><br/>The building blocks or “monomers” used for living CDSA consist of a rapidly expanding range of crystallizable block copolymers, homopolymers with charged termini, or planar p-stacking molecules with a wide variety of chemistries. The seeds used as “initiators” for living CDSA are usually prepared from preformed polydisperse 1D or 2D micelles by sonication.<br/><br/>Recent results indicate that living CDSA is scalable and therefore offers the potential to prepare uniform samples of particles and hierarchical materials with applications in areas such as optoelectronics, catalysis, and biomedicine.

Combining crystallization-driven and polymerization-induced self-assembly: Scale-up of uniform and hierarchical polymeric nano- and microparticles

2019 Fall National Meeting

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