Journal
ACS APPLIED NANO MATERIALS
Volume 5, Issue 5, Pages 5959-5971Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acsanm.1c04138
Keywords
liquid metal; nanocomposites; brushed polymers; colloidal stability; biological solutions
Funding
- Royal Society [IEC \NSFC\201223]
- National Health and Medical Research Council [APP1196850]
- UQ Amplify Women's Academic Research Equity (UQAWARE)
- Advance Queensland Women's Research Assistance Program (AQWRAP)
Ask authors/readers for more resources
This study investigates the effect of different anchoring groups on the stability of liquid metal nanoparticles (LMNPs), and finds that increasing the number of anchoring groups enhances the colloidal stability of LMNPs, while polymers bearing multidentate phosphonic acids provide the optimum chemical stability for LMNPs.
Liquid metal nanoparticles (LMNPs) have recently attracted much attention as soft functional materials for various biorelated applications. Despite the fact that several reports demonstrate highly stable LMNPs in aqueous solutions or organic solvents, it is still challenging to stabilize LMNPs in biological media with complex ionic environments. LMNPs grafted with functional polymers (polymers/LMNPs) have been fabricated for maintaining their colloidal and chemical stability; however, to the best of our knowledge, no related work has been conducted to systematically investigate the effect of anchoring groups on the stability of LMNPs. Herein, various anchoring groups, including phosphonic acids, trithiolcarbonates, thiols, and carboxylic acids, are incorporated into brush polymers via reversible additionfragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization to graft LMNPs. Both the colloidal and chemical stability of such polymer/ LMNP systems are then investigated in various biological media. Moreover, the influence of multidentate ligands is also investigated by incorporating different numbers of carboxylic or phosphonic acid into the brush polymers. We discover that increasing the number of anchoring groups enhances the colloidal stability of LMNPs, while polymers bearing phosphonic acids provide the optimum chemical stability for LMNPs due to surface passivation. Thus, polymers bearing multidentate phosphonic acids are desirable to decorate LMNPs to meet complex environments for biological studies.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available