Drexel Materials professor Christopher Li has received a three-year NSF grant for his project “Growing Polymer Crystalsomes under Dynamic Confinement.” In 2016 Li reported that his team had developed hollow spherical polymer nanoparticles which they dubbed ‘crystalsomes’. Polymer nanoparticles (PNPs) are widely used in a variety of applications including biomedicine, cosmetics, electronics, food science, photonics and additive manufacturing. Polymer crystalsomes exhibit superior mechanical properties along with unique thermal properties compared to PNPs. They are also easily manipulated to control their size, shape and chemical composition. In this project, Li will study the formation process of crystalsomes using three model emulsion systems to understand how they grow and enable the fabrication of complex PNPs for current and new applications.