Category: 2025-2026

Posted on

Quantifying and Leveraging Interfacial Amine Reactivity in Block Copolymer Nanoparticles for Advanced Material Design

Polymeric nanoparticles are powerful tools for nanomedicine and functional materials, but controlling their surface chemistry with precision remains a major challenge. In this work, we developed amine-functionalized polymer nanoparticles through aqueous polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA), creating stable and highly versatile nanostructures with tunable interfacial reactivity. By quantitatively controlling accessible surface amines, the nanoparticles could be efficiently modified with fluorescent dyes or thermoresponsive polymers and further assembled into hierarchical colloidosomes. The study highlights how precise molecular engineering at the nanoscale can be translated into predictable macroscopic functionality, opening new opportunities in drug delivery, diagnostics, and nanoreactor design.

Posted on

Going Deep into the Surface Chemistry of Carbon Dots: Influence of Functional Groups on the Redox Abilities

Carbon dots are tiny, fluorescent nanoparticles synthesised from cheap, readily available precursors, but for all their promise in catalysis, sensing, and chemical biology, one question has lingered: what actually makes them good at transferring electrons? This study digs into the surface chemistry of carbon dots to show that amine groups — their number, their density, and how accessible they are — are the decisive factor, and that understanding them quantitatively is the key to designing better nanomaterials.