0000000000349112
AUTHOR
Moritz Susewind
PAA-PAMPS Copolymers as an Efficient Tool to Control CaCO3 Scale Formation
Scale formation, the deposition of certain minerals such as CaCO3, MgCO3, and CaSO4 center dot 2H(2)O in industrial facilities and household devices, leads to reduced efficiency or severe damage. Therefore, incrustation is a major problem in everyday life. In recent years, double hydrophilic block copolymers (DHBCs) have been the focus of interest in academia with regard to their antiscaling potential. In this work, we synthesized well-defined blocklike PAA-PAMPS copolymers consisting of acrylic acid (AA) and 2-acrylamido-2-methyl-propane sulfonate (AMPS) units in a one-step reaction by RAFT polymerization. The derived copolymers had dispersities of 1.3 and below. The copolymers have then b…
Multiarm Polycarbonate Star Polymers with a Hyperbranched Polyether Core from CO2 and Common Epoxides
Multiarm star copolymers, consisting of hyperbranched poly(ethylene oxide) (hbPEO) or poly(butylene oxide) (hbPBO) polyether copolymers with glycerol branching points as a core, and linear aliphatic polycarbonate arms generated from carbon dioxide (CO2) and epoxide monomers, were synthesized via a “core-first” approach in two steps. First, hyperbranched polyether polyols were prepared by anionic copolymerization of ethylene oxide or 1,2-butylene oxide with 8–35% glycidol with molecular weights between 800 and 389,000 g·mol–1. Second, multiple arms were grown via immortal copolymerization of CO2 with propylene oxide or 1,2-butylene oxide using the polyether polyols as macroinitiators and (R,…
Silica-coated Au@ZnO Janus particles and their stability in epithelial cells
Multicomponent particles have emerged in recent years as new compartmentalized colloids with two sides of different chemistry or polarity that have opened up a wide field of unique applications in medicine, biochemistry, optics, physics and chemistry. A drawback of particles containing a ZnO hemisphere is their low stability in biological environment due to the amphoteric properties of Zn2+. Therefore we have synthesized monodisperse Au@ZnO Janus particles by seed-mediated nucleation and growth whose ZnO domain was coated selectively with a thin SiO2 layer as a protection from the surrounding environment that imparts stability in aqueous media while the Au domain remained untouched. The thi…
Designed peptides for biomineral polymorph recognition: a case study for calcium carbonate
With their unique ability for substrate recognition and their sequence-specific self-assembly properties, peptides play an important role in controlling the mineralization of inorganic materials in natural systems and in controlling the assembly of soft materials into complex structures required for biological functions. Here we report the use of an engineered heptapeptide that can differentiate between the crystalline anhydrous polymorphs of calcium carbonate. This peptide contains the positively charged amino acid arginine as well as proline rather than the prototypical negatively charged aspartate or glutamate units. Its affinity to vaterite compared to aragonite was demonstrated by fluo…