Star and Amphiphilic Responsive Anisotropic Colloids: Design and Self-Assembly

具有可调星形结构的混合胶体将由生物工程丝状FD病毒设计而成，作为与温度响应性微凝胶相关的臂，作为星形嵌段共聚物的中尺度类似物。这些新胶体聚合物的形成依赖于亚琛在功能微凝胶方面的互补专业知识，以及它们作为模型软胶体和波尔多对杆状病毒及其末端功能化的使用。得益于杆状病毒的长驻留长度，这种胶体共聚物有望提供一种新的极长程软势和丰富的相图，将结合显微镜和散射技术在直接空间和倒易空间进行研究。这些病毒臂的空间分布可调的胶体聚合物星将允许在单粒子尺度上进行动力学研究。最后，通过将价态降低到与一种微凝胶相连的一种病毒，或通过对微凝胶进行特殊功能化，将产生两亲性杂化，最终目标是创建模拟分子系统的胶体类似物，并在嵌段共聚物和表面活性剂的单颗粒水平上观察到。根据它们的有效堆积参数，这些两亲性胶体将自组织成定义的分级组装，如球形、蠕虫状或泡状超结构，从而为更好地理解它们的自组装过程和相变开辟了道路。

Hybrid colloids with tunable star architectures will be designed from bioengineered filamentous fd viruses acting as arms specifically associated with thermo-responsive microgels as a mesoscale analog of star block copolymers. The formation of these new colloidal polymers relies on the complementary expertise of Aachen on functional microgels and their use as model soft colloids and Bordeaux on rod-like viruses and their tip functionalization. Benefiting from the large persistence length of the rod-shaped virus, such colloidal copolymers are expected to offer a novel extremely long-range soft potential and a rich phase diagram that will be investigated both in the direct and reciprocal space combining microscopy and scattering techniques. These colloidal polymer stars with tunable spatial distribution of the viral arms will allow for dynamics study at the single particle scale. Finally, by reducing the valency to one virus linked to one microgel or by specifically functionalizing the microgels, amphiphilic hybrids will be produced with the ultimate goal to create colloidal analogs mimicking molecular systems and being observable at the single particle level of block copolymers and surfactants. According to their effective packing parameters, these amphiphilic colloids will self-organize into defined hierarchical assemblies, as spherical, worm-like or vesicular superstructures, opening the way of a better understanding of their self-assembly processes and phase transitions.