Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol.138, No.30, 9675-9681, 2016
Nanoscale Control of Polymer Assembly on a Synthetic Catalyst-Bilayer System
The use of the interior of self-assembled membrane as a template for polymer synthesis and assembly has long attracted the interest of chemists. However, it is difficult to utilize a lipid membrane as a chemical reactor for controlled assembly for polymers because lipid membrane is easily destabilized by loading of extraneous molecules. We found that a several-nanometer-thick bilayer vesicle made by self assembly of an organic fullerene amphiphile doped with a metathesis catalyst serves as a nanosized chemical reactor in water, where a polymer is synthesized and assembled, depending on the affinity of the growing polymer to the organic groups on the amphiphile. This catalyst bilayer system can thus control supramolecular assembly of the ester-functionalized polymer product into different nanoscale structures: a nanopartide made of a single polymer chain and a nanocapsule made of several tens of polymer chains.