Photoluminescent polymer micelles with thermo-/pH-/metal responsibility and their features in selective optical sensing of Pd(ii) cations.

Photoluminescent polymers can be divided into two types of structures: one is the well-known conventional π-conjugated rigid chain polymers bearing π-conjugated chromophores in their side chains, and the other is the common flexible polymers without π-conjugated chromophores in their main or side chains but with a feature of clustering electron-rich and/or dipole groups in their main and/or side chains. In this work, we found a new photoluminescent polymer comprising theophylline (T) and imidazole (I) residues in a suitable ratio in the side chains on the common polystyrenic block (PVB-T/I). We synthesized a block copolymer (denoted as P2) consisting of hydrophobic PVB-T/I and hydrophilic poly(-isopropylacrylamide), and we investigated its self-assembly into micelles and their micellar features, such as thermo-responsibility, fluorescence emission, pH, and metal ion-dependent photoluminescence, in detail.

Unusual chirality transfer from silica to metallic nanoparticles with formation of distorted atomic array in crystal lattice structure.

Transfer of chirality from chiral organic molecules to metallic nanoparticles (NPs) is a very attractive field of research and some unique approaches to obtaining chiral metallic NPs have been developed. However, to date, there has been no report in the literature that the chiral information of silica can be transferred into metallic NPs. In this work, a new chirality transfer system to metallic NPs from chiral silica has been achieved.

Convenient chirality transfer from organics to titania: construction and optical properties.

Polyethyleneimine (PEI) complexed with chiral d- (or l-) tartaric acid (tart) in water can self-organize into chiral and crystalline PEI/tart assemblies. It has been previously confirmed that the complexes of PEI/tart could work as catalytic/chiral templates to induce the deposition of SiO nanofibres with optical activity but without outwards shape chirality such as helices. In this work, we found that the templating functions of PEI/tart were still effective to prompt the deposition of TiO to form chiral PEI/tart@TiO hybrid nanofibres under aqueous and room temperature conditions within two hours.