Harnessing Endogenous Stimuli for Responsive Materials in Theranostics

Emerging applications of stimuli-responsive polymer materials.

Responsive polymer materials can adapt to surrounding environments, regulate transport of ions and molecules, change wettability and adhesion of different species on external stimuli, or convert chemical and biochemical signals into optical, electrical, thermal and mechanical signals, and vice versa. These materials are playing an increasingly important part in a diverse range of applications, ...

Harnessing the collective properties of nanoparticle ensembles for cancer theranostics

Biodegradable stimuli-responsive polypeptide materials prepared by ring opening polymerization.

The stimuli-responsive polypeptides have drawn extensive attention because of their promising applications in biotechnology considering their biocompatibility, biodegradability, and bioactivity. In this tutorial review, we summarize the most recent progress in this area, including thermo-, redox-, photo-, and biomolecule responsive polypeptides over the past decade. The design and synthesis of ...

Stimuli-responsive chemomechanical actuation: a hybrid materials approach.

Dynamic materials that can sense changes in their surroundings and functionally respond by altering many of their physical characteristics are primed to be integral components of future "smart" technologies. A fundamental reason for the adaptability of biological organisms is their innate ability to convert environmental or chemical cues into mechanical motion and reconfiguration on both the mo...

Stimuli-Responsive Hydrogels and Their Application to Functional Materials

Many kinds of stimuli-responsive polymer gels that respond to the change in their surroundings such as solvent composition, temperature, pH, and supply of electric field have been developed. They are of interest as intelligent (or smart, biomimetic) materials which have sensor, processor, and actuator functions. This article is related to stimuliresponsive gels and their application for bioor b...