On November 28th 2019, Prof. Steven P. Armes from University of Sheffield, Fellow of the Royal Society, was invited to our institute to give an academic lecture, titled “polymerisation-induced self-assembly” (PISA).

PISA is a highly versatile, potentially scalable platform technology that enables the efficient and rational synthesis of block copolymer nanoparticles of various morphologies directly in the form of concentrated dispersions. The basic principles of PISA are generic: a wide range of diblock copolymer nano-objects can be readily prepared in either water, ethanol or n-alkanes. In PISA, a soluble precursor 'A' block is chain-extended using a second monomer that forms an insoluble 'B' block in the chosen solvent. As this second 'B' block grows in the monomer/solvent reaction mixture, micellar nucleation occurs at some critical chain length, leading to the formation of sterically-stabilized nanoparticles. Depending on the relative volume fractions of the 'A' and 'B' blocks, the copolymer morphology can be either spheres, worms or vesicles.

Prof. Armes has made outstanding achievments in the field of controlled polymerization, polymerisation-induced self-assembly and physical characterization methods of colloids. He has published 610 publications in refereed journals (H-index = 109; > 34,000 citations) and invited to join ten journal editorial boards. He shared the frontier research progress in his field and provided valuble suggestions to faculties and students in our institute.