ABSTRACT
This Article reports the molecular imprinting of polymer single-chain particles that have a radius â¼3.7 nm. For this, the template L-phenylalanine anilide or L-ΦAA and a diblock copolymer PtBA-b-P(CEMA-r-CA) were used. Here, PtBA denotes poly(tert-butyl acrylate), and P(CEMA-r-CA) denotes a random block consisting of cinnamoyloxyethyl methacrylate (CEMA) and carboxyl-bearing (CA) units. In CHCl(3)/cyclohexane (CHX) with 64 vol % of CHX or at f(CHX) = 64%, a block-selective solvent for PtBA, PtBA-b-P(CEMA-r-CA) formed spherical micelles. The core consisted of the insoluble P(CEMA-r-CA) block and L-ΦAA, which complexed with the CA groups. Pumping slowly this micellar solution into stirred CHCl(3)/(CHX) at f(CHX) = 64% triggered micelle dissociation into single-chain micelles, which comprised presumably a solubilized PtBA tail and a collapsed P(CEMA-r-CA)/L-ΦAA head. Because the solvent reservoir was under constant UV irradiation, the photo-cross-linkable units in the P(CEMA-r-CA) head cross-linked, and the single-chain micelles were converted into cross-linked single-chain micelles or tadpoles. Synchronizing the micelle addition and photoreaction rates allowed the preparation, from this protocol, of essentially pure tadpoles at high final polymer concentrations. Imprinted tadpoles were procured after L-ΦAA was extracted from the tadpole heads. Under optimized conditions, the produced imprinted tadpoles had exceptionally high binding capacity and high selectivity for L-ΦAA. In addition, the rates of L-ΦAA release from and rebinding by the particles were high.
ABSTRACT
The influence of surface pressure and subphase temperature on the association of arborescent polystyrene- graft-poly(ethylene oxide) (PS- g-PEO) copolymers at the air-water interface was investigated using the Langmuir balance and atomic force microscopy (AFM) techniques. These dendritic molecules form stable condensed monolayers with surface compressional moduli >250 mN/m. The variation in film thickness observed as a function of surface pressure suggests that at low surface pressures (gaslike phase) the PEO chains remain adsorbed at the air-water interface. At higher surface pressures (condensed phase), the PEO chains partially desorb into the subphase and adopt a more brushlike conformation. Large islandlike clusters with a broad size distribution were observed for samples with PEO contents of up to 15% by weight. In contrast, copolymers with PEO contents of 22-43% displayed enhanced side-by-side association into ribbonlike superstructures upon compression. The same effect was observed even in the absence of compression when the subphase temperature was increased from 12 to 27 degrees C. The temperature-induced association was attributed to increased van der Waals attractive forces between the PS cores relative to the steric repulsive forces between PEO chains in the coronas because the solvent quality for the PEO segments decreased at higher temperatures. The restricted number of superstructures observed for arborescent copolymers as compared with linear- and star-branched PS-PEO block copolymers is attributed to the enhanced structural rigidity of the molecules due to branching.