Huang Xumin, Xu Tianhong, Shen Ao, Davis Thomas P, Qiao Ruirui, Tang Shi-Yang
Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia.
Department of Electronic, Electrical and Systems Engineering, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, U.K.
ACS Appl Nano Mater. 2022 May 27;5(5):5959-5971. doi: 10.1021/acsanm.1c04138. Epub 2022 Feb 14.
Liquid metal nanoparticles (LMNPs) have recently attracted much attention as soft functional materials for various biorelated applications. Despite the fact that several reports demonstrate highly stable LMNPs in aqueous solutions or organic solvents, it is still challenging to stabilize LMNPs in biological media with complex ionic environments. LMNPs grafted with functional polymers (polymers/LMNPs) have been fabricated for maintaining their colloidal and chemical stability; however, to the best of our knowledge, no related work has been conducted to systematically investigate the effect of anchoring groups on the stability of LMNPs. Herein, various anchoring groups, including phosphonic acids, trithiolcarbonates, thiols, and carboxylic acids, are incorporated into brush polymers via reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization to graft LMNPs. Both the colloidal and chemical stability of such polymer/LMNP systems are then investigated in various biological media. Moreover, the influence of multidentate ligands is also investigated by incorporating different numbers of carboxylic or phosphonic acid into the brush polymers. We discover that increasing the number of anchoring groups enhances the colloidal stability of LMNPs, while polymers bearing phosphonic acids provide the optimum chemical stability for LMNPs due to surface passivation. Thus, polymers bearing multidentate phosphonic acids are desirable to decorate LMNPs to meet complex environments for biological studies.
液态金属纳米颗粒（LMNPs）作为用于各种生物相关应用的软功能材料，近来备受关注。尽管有几份报告表明LMNPs在水溶液或有机溶剂中具有高度稳定性，但在具有复杂离子环境的生物介质中稳定LMNPs仍然具有挑战性。已制备了接枝功能聚合物的LMNPs（聚合物/LMNPs）以维持其胶体和化学稳定性；然而，据我们所知，尚未开展相关工作来系统研究锚定基团对LMNPs稳定性的影响。在此，通过可逆加成-断裂链转移（RAFT）聚合将包括膦酸、三硫代碳酸酯、硫醇和羧酸在内的各种锚定基团引入刷状聚合物中以接枝LMNPs。然后在各种生物介质中研究此类聚合物/LMNP体系的胶体和化学稳定性。此外，还通过在刷状聚合物中引入不同数量的羧酸或膦酸来研究多齿配体的影响。我们发现增加锚定基团的数量可增强LMNPs的胶体稳定性，而带有膦酸的聚合物由于表面钝化作用为LMNPs提供了最佳的化学稳定性。因此，带有多齿膦酸的聚合物适合用于修饰LMNPs，以满足生物研究的复杂环境。
