U. Hasegawa, T. Nishida, A. J. Vlies
Jun 19, 2015
Citations
1
Influential Citations
25
Citations
Journal
Macromolecules
Abstract
Phenylboronic acid-containing nanomaterials have found applications in various fields including biomedical engineering due to their unique stimuli-responsive characteristics. Contrary to the many reports on spherical nanoparticles, we are interested in nanostructures with different morphology which could potentially exhibit additional morphology-related effects. Here, phenylboronic acid-containing nanoparticles (PBANPs) in the size range of 80–250 nm in diameter were synthesized via aqueous dispersion polymerization of N-acryloyl-3-aminophenylboronic acid (PBAAM) using methoxy poly(ethylene glycol) acrylamide (PEGAM) as a polymerizable dispersant and N,N′-methylenebis(acrylamide) (MBAM) as a cross-linker. Microscopic analysis revealed that PBANPs were clusters, composed of smaller primary nanoparticles of ∼20 nm in diameter, possessing a framboidal morphology. The size of the PBANPs was significantly affected by the concentrations of PBAAM and PEGAM. Furthermore, PBANPs showed reversible swelling behavior...