Density functional theory has been employed to study the homogeneous catalytic copolymerization of styrene with carbon monoxide. The copolymerization reaction is catalyzed by Pd（II） coordinated with 2,2＇-bipyridine, a conventional nitrogen-containing bidentate ligand with achiral C2v symmetry. The chain propagation mechanism for the alternating copolymerization as well as the side reactions, including multiple insertions of CO and homopolymerization of styrene, has been investigated. This study focused exclusively on regioisomerism and stereoisomerism. We have demonstrated that the strictly alternating copolymerization is kinetically and thermodynamically favored over the side reactions （i.e., multiple insertions of CO and homopolymerization of styrene）. The regiochemistry study indicates the 2,1 type. Furthermore, the stereochemistry study shows that the syndiotactic conformation is preferred over the isotactic or atactic conformations.
Amphiphilic lipid molecules can form various micelles depending on not only their molecular composition but also their self-assembly pathway. In this work, coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations have been applied to study the micellization behaviors of mixed dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine （DPPC）/hexadecylphosphocholine （HPC） droplets. By vary- ing DPPC/HPC composition and the size of lipid droplets, various micelles such as spherical and nonspherical （oblate or prolate） vesicles, disk-like micelles, double or single ring-like and worm-like micelles were observed. It is found that the lipid droplet as an initial state favors forming vesicles and ring-like micelles due to in situ micellization. Our simulation results demonstrate that using special initial conditions combined with various molecular compositions is an effective way to tune lipid micellar structure.
