Аннотация:Double emulsions are complex fluid systems, in which droplets of a dispersed liquid phase
contain even smaller dispersed liquid droplets. Particularly, water-in-oil-in-water double
emulsions provide significant advantages over simple oil-in-water emulsions for microencapsulation, such as carrier of both aqueous and oily payloads and sustained release
profile. However, double emulsions are thermodynamically unstable systems consisting
typically of relatively large droplets. Here we show that nanoscale water-in-oil-in-water
double emulsions can be prepared by adding a silica precursor polymer, hyperbranched
polyethoxysiloxane, to the oil phase without any additional surfactants. The resulting double miniemulsions are transformed to robust water@SiO2@polymer@SiO2 nanocapsules via
conversion of the precursor to silica and polymerization of the oil phase. Other intriguing
nanostructures like nanorattles and Janus-like nanomushrooms can also be obtained by
changing preparation conditions. This simple surfactant-free double miniemulsion polymerization technique opens a promising avenue for mass production of various complex
hybrid nanostructures that are amenable to numerous applications.