Abstract
Hollow nanocapsules of polymer materials are expected to be used as carriers for drug delivery systems in medical applications. In this work, we have developed a simple and novel method for the preparation of hollow nanocapsules composed of polyaniline (PANI) polymerized on finebubble soft templates formed by ultrasonic irradiation. The key features of the method are an effective finebubble generation by ultrasonication and its application for the template synthesis of nano-sized hollow particles. At first, 20 kHz ultrasonic irradiation (183 W cm-2) was carried out in water. By this operation, a large number of finebubbles could be obtained. Next, we added anilinium chloride aqueous solution to the water. Subsequently, ammonium persulfate (APS) aqueous solution was added to the anilinium chloride solution to drive the oxidative polymerization on the surface of finebubbles, and finally PANI hollow nanocapsules in the size ranging from 200 to 300 nm were synthesized (finebubble template method). This method is regarded as an environmental-friendly process since it doesn’t require template removing process such as evaporation, thermolysis, and dissolution.
