TOWARDS MOF-MICROGEL HYBRID MATERIALS: RESPONSIVE MICROGELS AS COLLOIDAL PLATFORMS FOR ZIF-8 INTEGRATION

JUAN A. ALLEGRETTO; JUAN M GIUSSI; MATÍAS RAFTI; SERGIO MOYA; OMAR AZZARONI

São Pedro

Congreso; 6th Meeting on Self Assembly Structures in Solution and at Interfaces; 2018

Responsive materials are being studied lately for a wide range of applications. Microgels, one of the most promising responsive materials, have shown applicability in different areas and technological fields. It has been shown that thermosensitive Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAm) based microgels can be modified by incorporation of ionic groups such as Methacrylic acid units (MAA),evolving into a thermosensitive and pH-sensitive material. Doxorubicin load was probed already onto PNIPAm-co-PAA microgels [Poly(acrylic acid)] as hydrophilic drug model, achieving high cargo capacity.Metal-Organic Frameworks can be defined as infinite porous coordination networks constituted by organic and inorganic units and offer numerous attractive properties including high surface area, chemical versatility and relatively high chemical and thermal stability. Owing to these features, MOFs have been employed for a wide range of applications, from gas sensors to separation membranes. These materials are now being used very efficiently as drug/cargo delivery systems, with the advantage of very straightforward procedures for fine-tuning of their properties.Based on the above, the combination of both systems, Microgels and MOFs, have the potential to become a hybrid material with hierarchical porosity and polarity, which will open the path for further specific applications.In this work, we use pH/temperature sensitive PNIPAm-co-MAA Microgels as templates to synthesize ZIF-8 crystallites, a hydrophobic member of the Zeolitic Imidazolate Frameworks group, constituted by Zn2+ and 2-methylimidazolate organic linkers (mIm-). 1H-NMR, NOESY-NMR, DLS, WAXS and TGA experiments (among others) were done in order to characterize this new composite.