ИСТИНА

Polymer microgels with dense outer shell promise outstanding features as an universal carrier for different guest molecules. Shell-corona microgel structure formed by a pair of initially interpenetrated collapsed and swollen networks is proposed and investigated with computer simulations. Such systems can form classical core-corona structure (Fig. 1, a), shell-corona structure (Fig. 1, b) and also core-shell-corona structures (Fig. 1, c), depending on the subchain length and molecular mass of the system. The core-corona structures consisting of dense core and soft corona are formed at small microgel size, when networks are able to effectively separate in space. The most interesting, shell-corona structures consist of soft cavity and dense shell, surrounded with loose corona. These systems are found in narrow window of the microgel size, which values depends also on the subchain length and corresponding mesh size. At larger molecular masses, the collapsing network forms additional cores inside the soft cavity, leading to core-shell-corona structures.