American chemists from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Houston have created a new type of organic nanoparticles (oNPs) by exploiting the hyperbranching and chemical cross-linking mechanisms of oNPs. The study was published in the scientific journal magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Organic nanoparticles are more chemically versatile than their inorganic counterparts, allowing them to be functionalized and customized to suit specific biomedical and technological applications.
The team also used atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) to impart the hardness of an inorganic material to an organic compound.
“The organic nanoparticles designed and precisely manufactured using the ATRP method are in fact new giant single macromolecules with molar masses reaching values of 100 million daltons,” explained the authors of the development.
Scientists described a key feature of the new ONP system as macroinitiator properties, which make it possible to improve the optical properties of materials using organic nanoparticles, as well as to make them fluorescent, capable of absorbing and emitting light.
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