About project A8:
Complementary to inorganic materials, in this project the crystallinity of polyolefins is employed as a structure forming principle to generate anisotropic nanoparticles. To gain control of the nanocrystals' growth in their preparation by aqueous catalytic emulsion polymerization, stable advanced catalysts and an engineering of the polymerization process are pursued. As a complementary approach, an encoding of the nanocrystals' thickness not via the crystallization process but via the polymer microstructure, namely by precisely placed hydrophilic groups on the polymer chain is explored. A viable synthetic access and routes to asymmetric particles are sought. Molecular simulation will investigate structure and dynamics of these polyolefin nanoparticles in solution in order to predict targets for the elaborate particle synthesis.