Grafting polymers onto surfaces at high density to yield polymer brush coatings is a widely employed strategy to reduce biofouling and interfacial friction. These brushes almost universally feature synthetic polymers, which are often heterogeneous and do not readily allow incorporation of chemical functionalities at precise sites along the constituent chains. To complement these synthetic syste...

There is a growing demand for human-friendly robots that can interact and work closely with humans. Such robots need to be compliant, lightweight and equipped with silent and soft actuators. Electroactive polymers such as conducting polymers (CPs) are “smart” materials that deform in response to electrical simulation and are often addressed as artificial muscles due to their functional similari...

So far stimuli-responsive polymer gels and their application to smart materials have been widely studied. On the other hand, as a novel biomimetic gel, we developed gels with an autonomous self-oscillating function like a heart muscle, which was firstly reported in 1996. We designed the self-oscillating polymers and gels by utilizing the oscillating reaction, called the Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ...

Responsive polymeric assemblies and hybrid superstructures fabricated from stimuli-sensitive polymers and inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) have been the subject of extensive investigations during the past few decades due to their distinct advantages such as an improved water solubility, stimuli-responsiveness, excellent biocompatibility, and facile introduction of functional units. In addition, th...

Formation of microcracks is a critical problem in polymers and polymer composites during their service in structural applications. Development and coalescence of microcracks would bring about catastrophic failure of the materials and then reduce their lifetimes. Therefore, early sensing, diagnosis and repair of microcracks become necessary for removing the latent perils. In this context, the ma...

Polymers are being used extensively in drug delivery due to their surface and bulk properties. They are being used in drug formulations and in drug delivery devices. These drug delivery devices may be in the form of implants for controlled drug delivery. Polymers used in colloidal drug carrier systems, consisting of small particles, show great advantage in drug delivery systems because of optim...

Water contamination and its purification are a global problem. The current approach to purify water is reduction of impurities to acceptable levels. One of the ways to achieve this is by use of water-soluble polymers that extract organic and metallic contaminants, from water. This paper presents a blend of composite polymers that eliminates both the contaminants simultaneously by the principle ...

A dual-targeted siRNA nanocarrier has been synthesized and validated that is selectively activated in environments where there is colocalization of two breast cancer hallmarks, elevated matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) activity and folate receptor overexpression. This siRNA nanocarrier is self-assembled from two polymers containing the same pH-responsive, endosomolytic core-forming block but vary...

Current progress on hierarchical supramolecules using boronic acids has been highlighted in this feature article. Boronic acids can participate in "click reactions" with diols and their congeners with dynamic covalent functionality. By comprehensively exploring versatile sequential boronate esterification linkages between plural boronic acid-appended molecules and multiple hydroxyl counterparts...