초록 |
Water-dispersed nanoparticles are attracting considerable interest in biological applications such as bioimaging, biosepatation, and biosensing. A major challenge in biological applications of NPs is how to disperse NPs in aqueous media. Therefore there have been extensive studies in these directions. For example, polymers, lipids and thiol-based ligands for quantum dots (QDs), 4-(dimethyl-amino)pyridine for metal NPs, and α-cyclodextrin and maleic anhydride for Fe2O3 NPs have been studied. Here, we report a simple process for the aqueous dispersion of CdSe, Fe2O3 NPs using amphiphilic diblock copolymer, polystyrene-b-poly(acrylic acid). When the amphiphilic copolymers and NPs were dissolved together in THF, the addition of water caused the spontaneous formation of polymeric micelles, resulting in the uniform and stable micelles and the successful encapsulation and aqueous dispersion of NPs. The structure and size of NP-containing micelles were characterized by TEM, SEM, and DLS. |