Highly Monodispersed Colloidal Poly(glycidyl methacrylate) Sub-Microspheres With Tunable Gold Nanoparticles

Due to the unique physicochemical properties and manifold potential applications in electronics, medical imaging, drug delivery and energy storage devices, composite architectures composed of colloidal spheres and metallic nanoparticles have captured intense attention. A novel type of gold nanoparticles-coated composite spheres, based on chemically reactive poly(glycidyl methacrylate) (PGMA) colloids modified with a layer of poly(allylamine hydrochloride) (PAH) film at sub-micrometer scale was prepared by an easy and facile controlled assembly method. Based on 0.204 nm of the lattice plane observed by high-resolution transmission electron microscope (TEM), the (200) plane of the face-centered-cubic (fcc) crystal structure of the gold was obtained. In addition, the physicochemical properties including thermal stability, flame retardancy, dielectric and rheological property of the sub-microspheres were systematically studied. With the advantages of a strong immobilization of gold nanoparticles on the modified polymer spheres, those properties have an obvious improvement compared with pure PGMA.