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Thermoresponsive copolymer hydrogels prepared from micellar monomer solution of N-isopropylacrylamide and surfmers
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Tieke, Bernd Friedrich, Tatjana |
| Copyright Year | 2010 |
| Abstract | Intelligent hydrogels have attracted much attention in soft matter research because they are able to display a high sensitivity to external stimuli. Poly-N-isopropylacrylamide (PNIPAAm) hydrogels are known to undergo a reversible phase transition from water soluble to insoluble, if heated to temperatures above 32 °C, the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) of the gel. The phase transition involves clouding of the hydrogel network and expulsion of incorporated water. This property renders the hydrogels attractive for technical applications in the fields of sensors, actuators, switches and drug delivery systems. However, pure P-NIPAAm hydrogels only show weak mechanical stability and poor, not fully reversible swelling behaviour constricting their applications. Aim of our work is to overcome these limitations. For this purpose we copolymerize NIPAAm with polymerizable surfactants (surfmers) in a one-step reaction using gamma-irradiation [1]. A chemically and physically cross-linked network structure is formed consisting of blocks of P-NIPAAm and polymerized surfmer, the polymerized micelles acting as additional cross-linking units (Figure 1). |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.ecis-web.eu/abstracts/prague2010/all/0092.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
