Submitted:
29 October 2019
Posted:
30 October 2019
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Abstract
Clean use of photons from light to activate chemical reactions offer many possibilities in different fields, from chemistry and biology to materials science and medicine. This review article describes the advances carried out in last decades toward the phototriggered synthesis of single-chain polymer nanoparticles (SCNPs) as soft nanomaterials with promising applications in enzyme-mimicking catalysis and nanomedicine, among other different uses. First, we summarize different strategies developed to synthesize SCNPs based on photoactivated intrachain homocoupling, phototriggered intrachain heterocoupling and photogenerated collapse induced by external cross-linker. Next, we comprehensively review the emergent topic of photoactivated multifolding applied to SCNP construction. Finally, we conclude by summarizing recent strategies towards phototriggered disassembly of SCNPs.
Keywords:
photochemistry
; photofolding
; single-chain nanoparticles
Copyright: This open access article is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, which permit the free download, distribution, and reuse, provided that the author and preprint are cited in any reuse.
