A new paper from the group has just been published online in Macromolecular Rapid Communications. The paper describes work by Xiaobo (Bob) Hu, wherein he developed a 1-pot method for the synthesis of semi-hollow hydrogel nanocapsules containing thermoreversible nanoparticles. This follows on previous work by Bob wherein he developed methods for synthesizing yolk-shell particles as well as microgels with low levels of chain-transfer induced chain branching. Together, these papers illustrate how careful design of the synthesis conditions can enable fairly complex particle designs without the need for complicated multistep synthetic procedures. Hopefully, these approaches will enable the design of multifunctional vehicles for drug and protein encapsulation…stay tuned.
**Update (7/7/11) – GT Research News has posted a press release on this work. You can find it here: http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/gel-microcapsule/
The Chapman Nanoanalysis Lab (ChaNL) 