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Control of interfacial interactions leads to a dramatic change in shape and morphology for particles based on poly(styrene-b-2-vinylpyridine) diblock copolymers. Key to these changes is the addition of Au-based surfactant nanoparticles (SNPs) which are adsorbed at the interface between block copolymer-containing emulsion droplets and the surrounding amphiphilic surfactant to afford asymmetric, ellipsoid particles. The mechanism of formation for these novel nanostructures was investigated by systematically varying the volume fraction of SNPs, with the results showing the critical nature that the segregation of SNPs to specific interfaces plays in controlling structure. A theoretical description of the system allows the size distribution and aspect ratio of the asymmetric block copolymer colloidal particles to be correlated with the experimental results.

A new family of polymer electrolytes based on a poly(allyl glycidyl ether) (PAGE) platform has been developed that overcomes many of the limitations of poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) for battery electrolyte applications. PAGE was shown to have peak conductivities at [O]/[Li] = 16, with σ > 3 × 10–5S/cm at 25 °C and σ > 5 × 10–4S/cm at 80 °C. Below 60 °C, PAGE has a conductivity that is 10–100 times higher than that of PEO at equivalent salt concentrations with this disparity in conductivities between PAGE and PEO increasing with decreasing temperature. In addition, the synthetic versatility of allyl glycidyl ether as a building block is demonstrated by the preparation and evaluation of various AGE–EO macromolecular architectures that show superior performance to both PAGE and PEO.