Synthesis of Artificial Membrane of Copolymer (Acrylic Acid/Butyl Acrylate) PAA-PBA for the Design of Polymersomes

Abstract

Polymersomes are synthetic vesicles that imitate biological membrane functions. The purpose of this work is to develop an artificial copolymer (acrylic acid/butyl acrylate) PAA-PBA membrane by random synthesis. A factorial design 2^k was applied to determine the conditions for this reaction. The Fourier transform infrared spectrometer indicated that the polymerization reaction was complete without a –C=C-absorption peak. The Gordon-Taylor equation showed that the hydrophilic part of the PAA-PBA composition is 20–40% and the hydrophobic part 60–80%. The authors selected the copolymers with low molecular weight, within the range of 3134.49 ± 994.21 g/mol and a polydispersity of 1.40.

Keywords:

• Artificial membrane
• Gordon-Taylor equation
• PAA-PBA copolymer
• polymersomes
• 2^k factorial design