Effect of Steric Hindrance on Architecture Design and Associative Behavior of Amphiphilic Tripolymers

A novel series of amphiphilic tripolymers were synthesized, and the associative behaviors of the polymers were investigated by steady state fluorescence, dynamic light scattering (DLS), and transmission electron micrograph (TEM). Results showed that the increase of amphiphilic content resulted in a simultaneously decrease of the microdomain polarity and the aggregate size. The increase of the steric content leaded to an increase of aggregate size but no change of microdomain polarity, and the extent of size increasing decreases along with the increasing of amphiphilic units.