Mesoscopic simulation of the synthesis of enzyme-like catalysts

Abstract

A model based on the mesoscale simulation technique was developed for predicting the conditions for artificial enzyme formation from N-vinylcaprolactam (VCL) and N-vinylimidazole (NVI) by radical copolymerization of pre-synthesized poly-VCL blocks of different molecular weight with VCL and NVI comonomers. This synthetic procedure gives model copolymer chains. Upon a change in the solvent nature, these chains are able to form compact two-layer globular nanostructures with core–shell type morphology if the fraction of the first poly-VCL block is 25–38% of the total copolymer and the fraction of NVI monomers in the reaction mixture (in the concentration range considered) is maximum.