Facially amphiphilic polymers carrying cationic and hydrophobic groups on the same repeat unit have shown promising antimicrobial activity biocompatibility, yet they are prone to suffer from protein adhesion which may induce biofilm formation. To overcome this problem, poly(diitaconate)-based copolymers with cationic/hydrophobic protein-repellent/charge-neutral units synthesized. The bioactivit...

block copolymer nano-micelles are especially important in cancer treatment because of their fine dimensions. in this article, three systems of amphiphilic copolymers with similar lengths and different ratios of the hydrophobic and hydrophilic chains are studied using implicit-solvent coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations. the factor fphil is defined as the ratio of the number of hydroph...

Because of the limited chemotherapeutic approaches available to treat reactivated latent Toxoplasma gondii infection manifested as toxoplasmic encephalitis in AIDS patients, investigation of novel chemotherapeutic agents is warranted. Several poloxamers (nonionic block copolymers composed of a central hydrophobic chain of polyoxypropylene flanked by two hydrophilic chains of polyoxyethylene) we...

Organized arrays of anisotropic nanoparticles show electronic and optical properties that originate from the coupling of shape-dependent properties of the individual nanorods. The organization of nanorods in a controllable and predictable way provides a route to the fabrication of new materials and functional devices. So far, significant progress has been achieved in the self-assembly of nanoro...

The LCST-transitions of linear, well-defined polymers of N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPAM) and N-vinylcaprolactam (VCL), including a homopolymer mixture, diblock and statistical copolymers, in water are explored and compared by applying turbidity and FTIR measurements in combination with two-dimensional correlation spectroscopy (2Dcos). Only one transition is observed in all polymer systems, sugges...

We study the surface behavior of the asymmetric amphiphilic heteroarm poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO)/polystyrene (PS) star polymer on solid substrate. These star polymers differ in both architecture (four- and three-arm molecules, PEO-b-PS(3) and PEO-b-PS(2)) and in the length of PS chains (molecular weight from about 10 000 up to 24 000). We observed that, for a given chemical composition with a p...

Polystyrene-poly(acrylic acid) (PS-PAA) block copolymers polymerized by atom transfer radical polymerization were covalently grafted to both smooth and microtextured surfaces. These amphiphilic copolymers were utilized to create smart surfaces, which can be responsive to external stimuli, e.g., pH values or organic solvent. Atom force microscopy, field emission scanning electron microscopy, and...

Poloxamers F88 (EO97PO39EO97) and P85 (EO27PO39EO27) are triblock copolymers of ethylene oxide (EO) and propylene oxide (PO), which have the same hydrophobic PO block. We studied aqueous solutions of these two copolymers by the conjoint use of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), rheology, and small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). The results showed that the temperature-induced micellization...