Our latest work has been published in Langmuir, as part of a special issue focussed on Mechano- and Cryo-biology, which we were very proud to be invited to contribute too. In this work, we ask the question of 'do our antifreeze-protein mimetic polymers function the same in nanoparticle form, as in solution'. This might seem straightforward, as we know that increasing the molecular weight of our polymers, increases their activity, hence when immobilised on a nanoparticle they might be more active. We actually saw that there was no enhancement, but also no decrease (which again is a surprise as the nanoparticles have a lower molar concentration than free polymers). We made use of RAFT/MADIX polymerization to make thiol-terminated poly(vinyl alcohol) to coat gold nanoparticles for this particular work, as model nanoparticle systems, which were tunable in terms of size and composition.

Read the paper here;

Multivalent Presentation of Ice Recrystallization Inhibiting Polymers on Nanoparticles Retains Activity