Abstract
Polymeric nanocapsules have application in versatile fields, thus they have drawn much attention in the past decade. Preparing a homogeneous, uniform, small nanocapsule system is challenging and requires further improvement. A powerful way for realizing controlled synthesis of these submicron structures is by initiating them from a vesicular basis. Herein, we report the formation of highly monodisperse and rather small polymeric nanocapsules originating from a well-defined self-assembled surfactant-based system. In our approach, a monomer is initially dissolved in surfactant micelles, which are transformed spontaneously into well-defined vesicles upon mixing with a second surfactant solution. Subsequently, the monomer-loaded vesicles become polymerized via UV-initiated polymerization, where different amounts of monomers and cross-linkers are employed. The whole process is characterized in detail by light scattering and small-angle neutron scattering (SLS, DLS, and SANS) analyses. The final product of small, unilamellar, highly monodisperse polymeric nanocapsules has potential for applications with entrapping the cargo either in the aqueous core or in the hydrophobic membrane.
DOI Link to Publication