Download or read book Hydrophilic [60]fullerene End-capped Polystyrene-block-poly(ethylene Oxide) Copolymers written by Xiaochen Li and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recently, "shape amphiphiles" has attracted great attention. "Shape amphiphiles" usually refer to molecules possessing differences in the shape of the molecular moieties. It is found that these shape amphiphiles can self-assemble into diverse structure in solution, which is similar as small molecule surfactant and block copolymer, but has distinct molecular designs and topologies. Shape and interactions are two crucial factors to detect the self-assembly of these models. The previous research in our group has revealed that the giant molecular shape amphiphiles based on polystyrene-hydrophilic [60]Fullerene (AC60) conjugates can self-assemble into various structure. In this thesis, a comprehensive study on the synthesis and self-assembly behaviors in solution of a new giant molecular shape amphiphile, namely, the hydrophilic [60]Fullerene (AC60) tethered with polystyrene-b-poly(ethylene oxide) block copolymer (PEO-b-PS-AC60) has been investigated. The synthesis highlighted the Bingel-Hirsch cyclopropanation reaction for C60 surface functionalization and the Huisgen 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition of azide-alkyne, which is also well-known as "click" reaction, between alkyne functionalized AC60 and azide functionalized diblock copolymer PEO-b-PS to give rise to shape amphiphiles with precisely defined surface chemistry and molecular topology. For the block copolymer, the molecular weight of PEO was fixed at 2K/mol, a series of block copolymer PEO45-b-PS[subscript n] with different chain length of PS and narrow molecular weight distribution were synthesized by Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization (ATRP). The chemical structure of all intermediate and final products were fully confirmed and characterized by proton nuclear magnetic resonance(1H-NMR), carbon nuclear magnetic resonance (13C-NMR), Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time of flight (MALDI-TOF) mass, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and size-exclusion chromatography (SEC). The self-assembling behaviors of shape amphiphiles as-prepared in solution was investigated by using 1,4-dioxane/DMF mixture as the common solvent and water as the selective solvent. As revealed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), these shape amphiphilies exhibit versatile self-assembled micellar morphophogies, which can be tuning by changing initial molecular concentration or chain length of PS. Finally, the critical water concentration (CWC) of all shape amphiphiles as-prepared was determined by static light scattering (SLS) experiments. The results indicate that the value of (CWC) is dependent on the chain length of PS.