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    Fusogenic Metallosupramolecular Brush Vesicles

    Year: 2012

    Journal: Langmuir, 2012, 28 (40), 14164–14171, 20131009

    Authors: Lipeng He, Shuai Bi, Hui Wang, Baochun Ma, Weisheng Liu, Weifeng Bu

    Organizations: Key Laboratory of Nonferrous Metals Chemistry and Resources Utilization of Gansu Province, State Key Laboratory of Applied Organic Chemistry, and College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou City, Gansu Province, China

    The electrostatic combination of a cationic metallosupramolecular polyelectrolyte (Fe-MSP) with sulfonate-terminated polymers leads to the formation of metallosupramolecular brushes (MSBs). The resulting MSBs can self-assemble into vesicular structures in chloroform/methanol (v/v = 1:1) mixture solvents. The rigid-rod Fe-MSP chain has to bend for the formation of the vesicles, which accompanies the presence of a lateral tension and thus induces a spontaneous vesicle fusion with an hour-scale fusion time. For this much longer fusion process, the arrow-like protrusion, stalk-like intermediate, and hemifusion diaphragm are clearly observed by transmission electron microscopy. The complete fusion into larger vesicles significantly releases the lateral tension.