Author Description

The study of the solution self-assembly of nanoscale building blocks has had significant implications on both academic and industrial communities due to its potential to achieve complex structures with bottom-up designs. With the advance of synthetic routes and assembly processes, there exist endless possibilities and combinations of unique chemistry and assembly pathways to construct desired structures but also challenges in precise control and characterization of both local and global-level molecular interactions. Inspired by natural amphiphiles (e.g., fatty acids and lipids) and their ability to self-organize into various cell constituents, synthetic amphiphilic molecules have been studied to explore the extent one can mimic complex physiological assembly processes and also successfully incorporate this knowledge to various commercial applications including organic electronics, emulsifying or filler agents as well as in biomedical applications for developing nanomedicine or gene delivery carriers. Our interest also expands beyond the self-assembly of these amphiphiles into classic bio-inspired nanostructures such as micelles and bilayers to more complex, diverse nanostructures using large molecule analogues such as amphiphilic block copolymers. Amphiphilic block copolymers provide many advantages over small molecule amphiphiles not only because of their chemical diversity and mechanical robustness but, more importantly, due to their non-ergodic nature to form kinetically trapped nanostructures inaccessible by small molecule assembly. While many studies have been dedicated to understanding different parameters that impact the assembled morphology, studies are often limited to using coil-based or vinyl-based block copolymers where the effects of many non-classical polymer chain properties are not discussed. With the recent effort to design and synthesize next generation green chemistry-based polymers, the need for a deeper understanding of unconventional chain prop