Investigating morphological evolution in electrostatically-templated self-assembly systems by TR-SAXS

Polymerization-induced electrostatic self-assembly (PIESA) is a recently introduced reaction-assembly network which has proven to be a novel synthetic pathway for controlled design of coacervate(-like) or polyion complex (PIC) nanostructures. Guided by one of our pioneering studies, we recently started using PIESA for creating nucleic acid loaded micellar structures. By varying the chemistry and assembly conditions, micellar constructs with distinct morphological features and temporal evolution profiles could be obtained. To gain a fundamental understanding of how experimental variables impact PIESA-driven structure formation and evolution, we propose to use tr-SAXS. Given that morphologies evolve rapidly, high intensity synchrotron X-rays and fast mixing/flow capillary sample environments available at ID02 are instrumental for this research.