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Inside Cover: Spontaneous Formation of Giant Polymer Vesicles through a Nucleation and Growth Pathway (Chem. Asian J. 8/2012)
Author(s) -
Qian Hanqing,
Yao Wei,
Yu Shuling,
Chen Ying,
Wu Wei,
Jiang Xiqun
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
chemistry – an asian journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Reports
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.18
H-Index - 106
eISSN - 1861-471X
pISSN - 1861-4728
DOI - 10.1002/asia.201290031
Subject(s) - vesicle , nucleation , amphiphile , polymer , copolymer , polymer chemistry , self assembly , macromolecule , chemical engineering , chemistry , materials science , membrane , nanotechnology , organic chemistry , biochemistry , engineering
Polymer vesicles are one of the important self‐assembled structures of macromolecular amphiphiles. Besides the traditional membrane‐closing mechanism, an alternative nucleation and growth pathway of vesicle formation has been proposed theoretically based on block copolymers. In their Full paper on page 1875 ff ., Xiqun Jiang et al. designed a thermal sensitive amphiphilic hydrogen‐bonded interpolymer complex to obtain experimental evidence of the suggested mechanism. They show that small aggregates nucleated from a hydroxypropyl cellulose–acrylic acid (HPC–AA) complex coalesce and grow into large solid spheres, which eventually transform into vesicles.