Assembling Nano-Objects with Polymers: From Hybrid Nanoarchitecture to Functional Materials
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Abstract
In polymer-nanoparticles hybrids materials, functions can be imparted either through the clever design of new nano-building blocks or by gaining control over the manner those nano-building blocks organize. The main goal here was to develop new functional polymer-nanoparticles hybrid materials using both strategies. A new generation of functional materials was developed by expanding our library of functional nanoparticles and by the optimization of processing tools used to prepare hybrid materials by the assembly of nano-objects and polymers. In those new functional materials, function is conferred by the combination of chemical composition and structure.
In this thesis, two strategies have been used to fabricate assembled materials with new functions: 1) fabrication of new functional nano-building-blocks (nano-objects) and 2) processing of nano-building-blocks into hierarchical structured polymer/nanoparticle hybrid materials. To fulfill this goal, hybrid nanocapsules with damage self-reporting function (Chapter 3.1) and superparamagnetism (Chapter 3.5), disentangled single-chain polymer (Chapter 3.2), and inorganic nanoparticles with catalase-like activity and haloperoxidase-like activity (Chapter 3.3 and Chapter 3.4, respectively) have been synthesized and fabricated. Using processing methods allowing for the formation of complex hierarchical structures, such as Pickering emulsion followed by solvent evaporation (Chapter 3.1), electrospinning (Chapter 3.2, 3.3, and 3.4) or evaporation driven-assembly (Chapter 3.5) new functional materials based on the different nano-buildings blocks were prepared. The resulting nanoparticles/polymer hybrid materials, where functional nano-objects were dispersed in polymer matrices, were used to produce materials with “self-reporting”, wound healing and anti-biofouling functions. Moreover, a new assembly method, which combined evaporation assembly and magnetic assembly, has been developed to generate 3D anisotropic microstructures with superparamagnetic function. These new assemblies were able to be remotely controlled by a magnetic field and could find potential applications in micro-robotics (Chapter 3.5).
With this work, it was clearly demonstrated how the combination of nanoparticle synthesis and processing methods can be used to prepare new functional materials with unique properties.