Tannic acid-inspired star polymers for functional metal-phenolic networks with tunable pore sizes.

Tannic acid (TA) is a structurally undefined natural dendritic polyphenol. Here, we introduce a series of TA-inspired polymers with different arm lengths, M n , and phenolic groups that can be used to engineer metal-phenolic network (MPN) capsules with different properties including controlled permeability, high biocompatibility, and fluorescence.