Hairy Nanoparticles via Unimolecular Block Copolymer Nanoreactors

Nanoparticles (NPs) have been a hot research focus over the past few years owing to their unique size, shape-dependent properties and extensive applications. It is crucial to precisely control the features of NPs, including topology, architecture, composition, size, surface chemistry, and self-assembly, because these features will affect their properties and then applications. However, due to the mechanism of the kinetic growth of nanocrystals, the fabrication process often requires strict experimental conditions, and the shape and size of the nanocrystals are difficult to control. Ingenious nanofabrication strategies have been developed to precisely control these features of NPs, especially for templated nanofabrication within reasonably predesigned nanoreactors. Compared with conventional hard templates and supramolecular nanoreactors, unimolecular block copolymer micelles have shown fascinating precisely control prospects as templates for nanofabrication. Various NPs with designed morphologies, architectures, compositions, sizes, and surface properties can be synthesized easily within unimolecular block copolymer micelles nanoreactors in a programmable way. In this chapter, we provide a brief summary of the synthesis and properties of unimolecular block copolymer micelles nanoreactors, a condensed summary of representative methodologies of synthesis of NPs within these nanoreactors, and the main challenges faced for the potential further developments of this ingenious nanofabrication approach.