Self-Assembly to form Micelles and Vesicles

To facilitate the synthesis of well-defined nanostructures, methodologies have been developed that utilize covalent interactions to form robust building blocks, such as block copolymers. These can be designed to undergo a second assembly step via noncovalent interactions, with a relatively small number of components, to form 3D nanostructures, such as spheres, toroids, 

Complex Macromolecular Architectures Synthesis, Characterization, and Self-Assembly, First Edition. 

Edited by Nikos Hadjichristidis, Akira Hirao, Yasuyuki Tezuka and Filip Du Prez. 

This self-assembly process involves the association of an insoluble segment or segment(s) of the copolymer chain, when the copolymer is placed in a solvent system that solvates only a portion of the overall chain, at concentrations at or above the critical micelle concentration (cmc). A simple solution thermodynamic measure of aggregate stability or cmc can be expressed in terms of n, the degree of polymerization, by Equation 17.1, 

8h is the monomer s effective interaction parameter with the bulk solution and is key in determining the aggregates stability. 

---