Ultrafine Asymmetric Soft/Stiff Nanohybrids with Tunable Patchiness via a Dynamic Surface-Mediated Assembly
Zaiwang Zhao, Mengli Liu, Linlin Duan, Runfeng Lin, Lipeng Wang, Pengfei Zhang, Jun Li, Bing Ma, Yang Yang, Fanxing Bu, Ruicong Wang, Wanhai Zhou, Dongliang Chao, Yujuan Zhao, Sixing Yin, Lei Tang, Weian Zhang, Xiaomin Li, Dongyuan Zhao
Abstract
Asymmetric soft–stiff patch nanohybrids with small size, spatially separated organics and inorganics, controllable configuration, and appealing functionality are important in applications, while the synthesis remains a great challenge. Herein, based on polymeric single micelles (the smallest assembly subunit of mesoporous materials), we report a dynamic surface-mediated anisotropic assembly approach to fabricate a new type of small asymmetric organic/inorganic patch nanohybrid for the first time. The size of this asymmetric organic/inorganic nanohybrid is ∼20 nm, which contains dual distinct subunits of a soft organic PS-PVP-PEO single micelle nanosphere (12 nm in size and 632 MPa in Young' modulus) and stiff inorganic SiO 2 nanobulge (∼8 nm, 2275 MPa). Moreover, the number of SiO 2 nanobulges anchored on each micelle can be quantitatively controlled (from 1 to 6) by dynamically tuning the density (fluffy or dense state) of the surface cap organic groups. This small asymmetric patch nanohybrid also exhibits a dramatically enhanced uptake level of which the total amount of intracellular endocytosis is about three times higher than that of the conventional nanohybrids.