Polymeric microemulsions self-assembled

Description of the different mimetic systems will be the starting point of the presentation (Sect. 2). Preparation and characterization of monolayers (Langmuir films), Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) films, self-assembled (SA) mono-layers and multilayers, aqueous micelles, reversed micelles, microemulsions, surfactant vesicles, polymerized vesicles, polymeric vesicles, tubules, rods and related SA structures, bilayer lipid membranes (BLMs), cast multibilayers, polymers, polymeric membranes, and other systems will be delineated in sufficient detail to enable the neophyte to utilize these systems. Ample references will be provided to primary and secondary sources. 

Polymerization of LB films, or deposition of LB films on polymers, offers the opportunity to impart to LB films a higher degree of mechanical integrity. However, preliminary work in this direction shows a conflict between the chainlike primary structure of the polymer and the well-organized supramo-lecular structure [15]. One possible solution may be the insertion of flexible spacers between the main chain polymer and the side chain amphiphile, a route also employed in liquid crystal polymers. These materials belong to an interesting class of two-dimensional polymers, of which there are few examples. These toughening techniques may eventually be applied to stabilize other self-assembled microstructures, such as vesicles, membranes, and microemulsions. 

Self-assembled polymeric structures have promising applications in nanomaterials synthesis. As demonstrated by Zhou and Lodge for bicontinuous microemulsions of poly-isoprene/polystyrene [9], mesoporous polymeric networks (Fig. 7.4) can be obtained by... 

A.S. Patole, S.P. Patole, S.-Y. Jung, J.-B. Yoo, J.-H. An, T.-H. Kim, Self assembled graphene/carbon nanotube/polystyrene hybrid nanocomposite by in situ microemulsion polymerization, European Polymer Journal, 48 (2), 252-259, 2012. 

VDF and suitable comonomers can be polymerized as a microemulsion where fluorinated oil-in-water microemulsion and fluorinated surfactant are present (37-39). The core-shell structure of these self-assembling systems and their distinctive pol5unerization features along with the range of particle size distribution have been reported (40). 

In the first section, various kinds of functional polymer, in particular the most used conductive polymer, conjugated polymer (CP), redox polymer, metallopolymer. Selection of the correct functional polymer depends on the desired properties of the resulting nanocomposites. The second part of the chapter focuses on the basic approaches used in the preparation of polymeric nanoparticles. As mentioned earlier, there are two basic approaches in the recent literature to synthesize the polymeric nanoparticles. In this section, we focus on the discussion of the common and widely used preparation methods for various kinds of polymeric nanoparticles. The polymerization method is based on the encapsulation of nanoparticles through heterogeneous polymerization in dispersion media. This method can be further classified into emulsion, microemulsion and miniemulsion. Polymer encapsulated nanoparticles can also be prepared directly from preformed polymer, where this approach is based on the specific interactions between nanoparticles and the preformed polymer, such as electrostatic interactions, hydrophobic interactions and secondary molecular interactions or self-assembly method. 

Surfactants provide several types of well-organized self-assembhes, which can be used to control the physical parameters of synthesized nanoparticles, such as size, geometry and stability within liquid media. Estabhshed surfactant assembles that are commonly employed for nanoparticie fabrication are aqueous micelles, reversed micelles, microemulsions, vesicles [15,16], polymerized vesicles, monolayers, deposited organized multilayers (Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) films) [17,18] and bilayer Upid membranes [19](Fig. 2). 

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