Carborane-Containing Polymer Nanoparticles via Light-Mediated Polymerisation-Induced Self-Assembly

Abstract

Carboranes are an important class of icosahedral carbon-boron clusters that have been intensively studied in the fields of medicinal, organometallic, and materials chemistry. In recent years, there have been efforts to incorporate carboranes into block copolymers to explore their biomedical applications. Few studies have used reversible deactivation radical polymerisation processes to the synthesize carborane-based polymers. In this work, we report the synthesis of a series of well-defined poly[oligo(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate]-block-poly(closo-1,2-carboranylethyl methacrylate) (POEGMA-b-PCbEMA) block copolymers by means of a photo-mediated reversible addition-fragmentation chain-transfer (RAFT) polymerisation, and report the formation of nanoparticles of various morphologies through polymerisation-induced self-assembly (PISA). Various parameters including temperature, irradiation source, degree of polymerisation of the core-forming block, solids and water content were found to have an impact on the polymerisation process and the final morphologies.