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The formation of well-defined polymer/inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) hybrid micelles with high loading of the NPs is critical to the development of nanomaterials with desired optical, electric, magnetic, and mechanical properties. Herein, we introduce a simple strategy to encapsulate monodisperse polystyrene (PS)-grafted Au NPs into the PS core of PS-b-poly(4-vinylpyridine) (PS-b-PVP) micelles through block copolymer (BCP)-based supramolecular assembly. We demonstrate that selective incorporation of gold NPs into the PS cores during the assembly process can induce the formation of well-ordered hybrid micelles with spherical, cylindrical, or nanosheet morphologies. The number of NPs in each micelle can be effectively increased by simply increasing the content of NPs and adjusting the ratio of 3-n-pentadecylphenol (PDP) to the P4VP units accordingly. The balance between the NP loading (increasing the volume fraction of PS domain) and the PDP addition (increasing the volume fraction of PVP(PDP) domain) mainta...

This paper describes an effective approach to order gold nanorods (NRs) within cylindrically confined microdomains of block copolymer- (BCP-) based supramolecular assemblies. Individual BCP micelles encapsulated with well-ordered NRs can be obtained by disassembling the supramolecular structures. The mismatch of binary polymer brushes with different lengths on the surface of the NRs was used to effectively improve the dispersion of the NRs within polymer matrix, due to enhanced wetting of the brushes by surrounding mismatch polymers. This enables us to quantitatively explore the location and orientation of the NRs within confined geometries. By varying the content of NRs, the aspect ratio of the NRs, or the diameter of the cylindrical BCP micelles, the orientation of the NRs within micelles can be tuned to form one-dimensional nanostrings with end-to-end organization of NRs along the micelles or with side-by-side twisted arrangement of NRs perpendicular to the micelles. UV–vis spectroscopy measurements an...

Macroporous copolymer particles have a broad range of applications such as ion exchange resins and sorbents, catalyst supports, and carriers of biologically active species. Many of these applications require precise control of the dimensions of microbeads in the range from 50 to 100 µm and predetermined size of pores. This paper reports semicontinuous photoinitiated microfluidic synthesis of macroporous polymer particles with the designated dimensions and a range of internal structures. Comparison with microspheres synthesized by conventional suspension polymerization shows that microfluidic synthesis provides better control over the porous structure of the microbeads.