Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol.137, No.11, 3771-3774, 2015
Controlled Supramolecular Self-Assembly of-Large Nanoparticles in Amphiphilic Brush Block Copolymers
To date the self-assembly of ordered metal nanoparticle (NP)/block copolymer hybrid materials has been limited to NPs with core diameters (D-core) of less than 10 nm, which represents only a very small fraction of NPs with attractive size-dependent physical properties. Here this limitation has been circumvented using amphiphilic brush block copolymers as templates for the self-assembly of ordered, periodic hybrid materials containing large NPs beyond 10 nm. Gold NPs (D-core = 15.8 +/- 1.3 nm) bearing poly(4-vinylphenol) ligands were selectively incorporated within the hydrophilic domains of a phase-separated (polynorbornene-g-polystyrene)-b-(polynorbornene-g-poly(ethylene oxide)) copolymer via hydrogen bonding between the phenol groups on gold and the PEO side chains of the brush block copolymer. Well-ordered NP arrays with an inverse cylindrical morphology were readily generated through an NP-driven order order transition of the brush block copolymer.