POS1-0514

Real-Time Observation of Photo-Induced PISA in Architecturally Inverted Miktoarm Copolymers

Topic

S1. Polymer Synthesis

When and Where

Sep 29, 2026 08:30 - 09:30

Room 301 (Grand Ballroom)

Session Chairs

Hae Jung SON

Boseok KANG

Presenter(s)

Chaeyeon Park ( Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Buk-gu, Gwangju, Korea (the Republic of).)

Co-Author(s)

Niraj K. Vishwakarma (Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Gwangju 61005, Republic of Korea), Eunji Lee (1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Buk-gu, Gwangju, Korea (the Republic of). 2. Department of Chemistry, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Buk-gu, Gwangju, Korea (the Republic of). 3. GIST InnoCORE AI-Nano Convergence Institute for Early Detection of Neurodegenerative Diseases, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Buk-gu, Gwangju, Korea (the Republic of).)

Abstract

Polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA) is a powerful one-pot route to polymer nanostructures at high solid content, yet how nanostructures form during the process remains poorly understood. Two architecturally inverted miktoarm copolymers, an A₂B-type and an AB₂-type, prepared by aqueous RAFT-mediated photo-PISA, follow distinctly different morphological evolutions, indicating that miktoarm architecture governs curvature preference and morphological transition pathways through packing-parameter modulation. To resolve this architecture-dependent mechanism directly, rather than infer it from end-point structures, we employ liquid-phase electron microscopy (LP-EM), in which the electron beam initiates PISA while imaging it at nanometer resolution. This tracks, in real time, the transient intermediates invisible to ex situ methods, revealing at the single-aggregate level how miktoarm topology steers the assembly pathway and selects the final morphology.

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