Self-Assembly of PEG-b-PTMC Copolymers: Micelles and Polymersomes Size Control

Coralie Lebleu (1, 2) , Laura Rodrigues (1, 2) , Jean-Michel Guigner (3) , Annie Brûlet (4) , Elisabeth Garanger (1, 2) , Sébastien Lecommandoux (1, 2)

1 LCPO - Laboratoire de Chimie des Polymères Organiques
2 Team 3 LCPO : Polymer Self-Assembly & Life Sciences
3 IMPMC - Institut de minéralogie, de physique des matériaux et de cosmochimie
4 MMB - LLB - Matière molle et biophysique

Poly(ethylene glycol)45-b-poly(trimethylene carbonate)n PEG45-b-PTMCn diblock copolymers were synthesized with five different PTMC degrees of polymerization (n = 38, 96, 144, 170, 332) and their self-assembly properties in water were studied using a manual nanoprecipitation procedure. We confirmed that the copolymer’s hydrophilic weight fraction (fPEG) is controlling nanoparticles morphology. We determined that the PEG45-b-PTMC96 with fPEG ≈ 17% is the optimal hydrophilic fraction for the stabilization of well-defined unilamellar vesicles with a membrane thickness of δ ≈ 14.6 nm. Maintaining this fraction constant and modulating the overall molar mass of the block copolymers allowed the establishment of a power law of which provides a robust correlation between the molar mass of PTMC and vesicles’ membrane thickness. Finally, we proved that controlling nanoprecipitation’s conditions by microfluidics allowed fine-tuning and control of the nanoparticles size and polydispersity index while maintaining their shape with a perfect batch-to-batch reproducibility.

Mots clés: Nanoprecipitation; Block Copolymers; Polymersomes; Microfluidics; Ring Opening Polymerization

Domaines: Polymères; Matériaux; Matière Molle [cond-mat.soft]

Coralie Lebleu, Laura Rodrigues, Jean-Michel Guigner, Annie Brûlet, Elisabeth Garanger, et al.. Self-Assembly of PEG-b-PTMC Copolymers: Micelles and Polymersomes Size Control. Langmuir, 2019, 35 (41), pp.13364-13374. ⟨10.1021/acs.langmuir.9b02264⟩. ⟨hal-02306925⟩