Direct Synthesis of Anisotropic Polymer Nanoparticles

No (self-)assembly required: Both spherical and anisotropic “dumbbell” polymer nanoparticles with targeted shapes in the <100-nm size range were prepared by direct synthesis not relying on self-assembly. Atom-transfer polymerization techniques at high concentrations produce both spherical and dumbbell-like nanoparticles directly from simple vinyl monomers on a multigram scale.