Monday, May 19, 2008
Student Union Building, Upper (Queensborough Community College)
361

Preparation and Characterization of Nano-Hollow Spheres of Conducting Polymer by “Micro-Interfacial Polymerization” and the Study of Controlled Release from Them

I-Wei Chu, College of Staten Island/CUNY, Staten Island, NY, Kai Su, Ciba Specialty Chemicals, Tarrytown, NY, and Nan-Loh Yang, CUNY-College of Staten Island, Staten Island, NY.

I-Wei Chu, Kai Su, and Nan-Loh Yang

In recent years, controlled releases by using conducting polymers as novel vesicles have attracted attentions due to their unique property of substantial volume changes with the variation of doping level. Hollow conducting polymer nanostructures have promises for loading contents of interest, although relatively poor mechanical properties and limited solubility of conducting polymers lead to significant challenges in the fabrication of such structures. We report here a novel soft-template synthesis of conducting polymer nano-hollow-spheres for controlled releases. These hollow spheres were readily prepared by using a “micro-interfacial polymerization” approach under mild reaction conditions. The concentration of 3, 4-ethylenedioxythiophene (EDOT) monomer plays a significant role in controlling the morphology of intact hollow PEDOT nanospheres. The size of nano-hollow sphere can also be readily tuned from 75nm to 400nm by ionic liquid to surfactant (IL-to-surfactant, R) ratio. Furthermore, the behaviors of controlled release were studied by tuning pH.