From Amphiphilic to Polyphilic Polymers
A special issue of Polymers (ISSN 2073-4360).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2017) | Viewed by 106627
Special Issue Editor
Interests: polymer synthesis; amphiphilic block copolymers; biomedical materials; polymer blends; thermodynamics; scattering methods
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The term “amphiphilic polymers” is well-established in polymer science and is usually employed for macromolecules with hydrophilic and lipophilic domains in various polymer architectures formed by blocks, branches, randomly organized monomer units, dendritic structures, and networks, etc. The term polyphilic is less common and was originally coined in the field of liquid crystals. Adopted by polymer science, the term polyphilic means that, in addition to hydrophilic and lipophilic (i.e., amphiphilic) domains in the polymer, other philicities exist. A meanwhile well-established concept is e.g. related to triphilic polymers which are usually formed by hydrophilic, lipophilic, and fluorophilic units. It should be mentioned that fluorophilic segments are also hydrophobic and lipophobic, which leads to a tremendous increase of possible structure formations in bulk or in solution. Thus, the term ‘polyphile’ means a combination of at least three inter- and intramolecular interactions which are formed within a polymer (i.e., in bulk) or with a surrounding solvent. This concept includes specific interactions between polymer and water (hydrophilic), polymer and non-polar surrounding (lipophilic), polymer and solvent in general (solvophilic), polymer and chemical element (fluorophilic, borophilic, siliphilic etc.,) and philicities which arise from the specific shape of the molecule (π–π stacking, mesogen–mesogen interactions, covalently attached nanoparticles, coil–coil interactions, chiral recognition, etc.,). Due to the frequently specific interactions which are encoded in the inherent structure of the polymer or in the specific environment (solvent), a plethora of structure formation processes is potentially known from the building principles of nature. This might lead to the formation of thermodynamically stable supramolecular structures or to transient, kinetically determined structures which are highly dynamic. These new morphologies and their dynamics can then be tailored e.g., for interactions with membranes, in the field of nanomedicine, and for pharmaceutical or biomedical applications.
Prof. Dr. Jörg Kressler
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- amphiphilic
- polyphilic
- hydrophilic
- lipophilic
- solvophilic
- elementophilic
- fluorophilic
- shape felicity
- copolymers
- supramolecular structure
- thermodynamics
- dynamics
- membranes
- pharmacy
- nanomedicine