Polymer nanodiscs are challenging to make.[1] This is because self-assembly processes typically yield micelle shapes of minimised energy, like spheres or vesicles. Flattening such assemblies is more intricate, as block ratios and solvent—polymer interactions alone cannot compensate for the energy costs to flatten a curved surface or interface. Taking on this challenge, we designed an amphiphilic, tadpole-like copolymer featuring a hydrophilic linear block and a hydrophobic bottlebrush block.[2,3] The linear segment assumes a coil-like conformation, while the bottlebrush segment adopts a stiffened, rod-like structure. Using this rod-coil architecture facilitated planar packing of brush segments and yielded nanoscale polymer discs via spontaneous self-assembly. A characteristic feature of this methodology is the possibility to select the chemical composition of the brush segment without compromising the disc formation. This allows the introduction of functionality into these amorphous core-shell nanodiscs, enabling triggered disassembly and/or drug release, depolymerisation, or shape-transformation. My talk will introduce our general approach.

Thin film composite (TFC) polyamide (PA) membranes are widely used for water desalination [1]. In this work novel low fouling TFC PA membranes blended with 0.01-0.20 wt.% Acacia gum (AG) were prepared by using the interfacial polymerization method [2], characterized and tested for seawater desalination.
It was found that the hydrophilicity of PA/AG membranes increased (by up to 45%) compared with the bare PA membrane due to the amphiphilic nature of AG, while the surface roughness was decreased. The presence of carboxylic and amino groups in AG macromolecules has been found to increase the negative surface charge of the membrane surface. The membrane flux was also improved with PA/AG membranes becouse of enhancing the membrane hydrophilicity and surface charge while maintaining NaCl rejection above 96%. Due to the increase in hydrophilicity and reduction in surface roughness, a significant reduction in the fouling of PA/AG membranes was observed by the increase in the normalized flux (by 44%) when sodium alginate solution was filtered through the membrane. The RO PA/AG membranes were tested with seawater collected from the Arabian Gulf and showed higher salt rejection and lower flux decline during filtration when compared to commercial GE and DuPont membranes.
The effect of the addition of AG on the hydrophilicity, surface roughness, flux, salt rejection, and fouling resistance of the novel TFC PA/AG membranes is discussed. It was shown that AG incorporation into a PA layer can be used to enhance the properties and performance of TFC PA membranes in seawater desalination.

Various conductive polymer/carbon material coated metal oxide ternary composites were fabricated and used as ammonia gas-sensing material for the detection of hepatic or kidney disease from human breath. In this presentation, the conductive polyaniline (PANI) and graphene quantum dot coated hollow cerium dioxide (CeO2) nanofiber were synthesized to demonstrate their detection possibility. Fourier transform infrared spectrometer, field-emission scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy were applied to illustrate the chemical structure and morphology of the fabricated ternary composites. The gas-sensing performances of the fabricated ternary composite sensors were estimated at room temperature and the response value of the composite sensor with an exposure of 1 ppm NH3 was 24.8, which was much better than those of PANI and PANI/hollow CeO2 nanofiber sensors. The ternary composite sensor was demonstrated to be highly sensitive to the detection of NH3 in the concentration range of 0.6~2.0 ppm, which is critical for kidney or hepatic disease detection from the human breath. This composite sensor also displayed superior repeatability and selectivity at room temperature with exposures of 1.0 and 2.0 ppm NH3. Because of the outstanding repeatability and selectivity to the detection of NH3 at 1.0 and 2.0 ppm confirmed in this investigation, the ternary composite sensor will be considered as a favorable gas-sensing material for kidney or hepatic disease detection from the human breath.

Solar-driven water evaporation, which can separate the soluble or dispersed contaminants from water, is particularly desirable due to its green energy utilization for water purification. Recent advancements in solar-driven interfacial evaporation have shown promise in addressing global water scarcity, yet significant challenges remain in enhancing water evaporation rate and salt rejection. Our recent groundbreaking research (1, 2) has redefined the understanding of polyelectrolyte-water interactions, developing Janus hydrogel evaporator with polyelectrolyte-shell micelle grafted on the surface and revealing biparental groups on the polyelectrolyte effectively disrupted hydrogen bonds in water network. Technically, we developed an electric-field-driven polyelectrolyte grafting strategy to evenly and stably graft a monolayer of polyelectrolyte-shell micelles onto hydrogel, allowing their responsive conformational changes under electric field to entangle with the hydrogel network. This strategy establishes a Janus evaporator with a high-density polyelectrolytes layer on the evaporation surface, effectively lowering the chemical potential and ensuring sufficient water supply. Moreover, by molecular engineering the biparential polyelectrolyte, the optimized configuration has a synergistic balance between water attraction via electrostatic interactions and water repulsion via steric hindrance. This configuration effectively disrupted the water’s hydrogen bond network, lowering the water evaporation enthalpy to 1434 J g⁻¹, surpassing prior benchmarks. Additionally, the grafted micelle layer exhibited a salt rejection ratio of 99.62%, ensuring excellent desalination performance. The biparental polyelectrolyte-shell micelles grafting strategy is broadly applicable across diverse hydrogel systems, representing a significant advancement in solar-driven desalination technology.

Melt blending is considered the most economical and industrially viable approach for enhancing the ductility and toughness of polylactic acid (PLA). In fact, this strategy does not require any preventive chemical functionalization of the polymer components, thus avoiding the use of chemicals and solvents potentially increasing the environmental impact of the whole process. Additionally, unlike the use of plasticizers that often lead to a detrimental decrease of stiffness, the proper selection of the modifier polymer enables the obtainment of materials with satisfactory toughness/stiffness balances. Nevertheless, achieving the desired mechanical properties through melt blending requires good compatibility between the polymer components and homogeneous morphologies. In this work, fully bio-based blends were formulated, aiming at improving the intrinsic brittleness and low impact strength of PLA, while maintaining unaltered the sustainability characteristics of the matrix. In particular, three different approaches were followed: (i) utilization of natural compatibilizers for enhancing the miscibility between the polymeric phases; (ii) formulation of ternary blends, involving the incorporation of two biopolymers as minor phases; (iii) proper designing of the process technology and parameters for achieving refined morphologies. In all cases, the phase behavior, the morphology and the mechanical behavior of the blends characterized by various compositions were thoroughly investigated, aiming at disclosing the processing-microstructure-properties relationships governing the behavior of such kind of complex systems. All the exploited strategies have proved effective in enhancing the mechanical characteristics of PLA, especially in terms of toughness and impact strength, without significantly compromising its typical high stiffness and tensile strength.