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Micrometer-scale monodisperse droplets are produced to generate nanowalled supramolecular microcapsules using microfluidics for high reproducibility and high-throughput manipulation, efficient material consumption, and control over hierarchical structure, shape, and size. In this study, an optimized microfluidic droplet generation technique and a unique liquid–liquid interfacial polymerization method were applied to fabricate the monodisperse polyrotaxane–based supramolecular microcapsules in a fast and simple way. To minimize the uncertainty due to droplet volume variation, the inlet pressures were supplied from the same source while lowering the interfacial tension and the main channel hydrodynamic resistance, which are critical for high monodispersity. The target polyrotaxane network (PN) was simply formed at the interface of the water and oil phases in ultra-monodisperse microdroplets via the cucurbit[6]uril (CB6)-catalyzed azide–alkyne cycloaddition (CB6-AAC) reaction between azido- and alkyne-functionalized tetraphenylporphyrin monomers (TPP-4AZ and TPP-4AL). The thickness of the interfacially assembled PN microcapsules was 20 nm as analyzed by cross-sectional TEM and TEM-EDX techniques. The resultant water-in-oil PN microcapsules were highly monodisperse in size and able to retain target molecules. Here, rhodamine 6G (Rh6G)-loaded PN microcapsules were fabricated, and the release rate of the Rh6G cargo was investigated over time for controlled drug release applications.

Here, we adapt the catalytically self-threading polyrotaxane synthesis for the construction of two-dimensional polymeric thin films using a water−oil interfacial polymerization method. In this method, the polymerization and the rotaxane formation take place simultaneously at the interface because of the presence of catalytically active cucurbit[6]uril (CB6) that can facilitate 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reaction between alkyne and azide to form polytriazoles. By varying the concentration of the monomers, reaction time, and the size of the reaction vessel, it is possible to control the thickness and the lateral dimensions of the film. The as-synthesized film is free-floating, transparent, and robust enough to be transferred to any substrates. It contains photoactive porphyrin units which are quite appealing as a photosensitizer because of their capability to produce reactive oxygen species in high yield upon visible light irradiation. By taking advantage of these aforementioned features, this film was employed as a broad-spectrum photo-antimicrobial agent whose activity was switched on by light excitation against both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacterial strains and switched off in the dark.