Responsive polymer-based materials have found numerous applications due to their ease of synthesis and the variety of stimuli that they can be made responsive to. In this review, we highlight the group's efforts utilizing thermoresponsive poly (N-isopropylacrylamide) (pNIPAm) microgel-based optical devices for various sensing and biosensing applications.

We report on the facile synthesis of well-defined amphiphilic and thermoresponsive tadpole-shaped linear-cyclic diblock copolymers via ring-opening polymerization (ROP) directly initiating from cyclic precursors, their self-assembling behavior in aqueous solution, and the application of micellar assemblies as controlled release drug nanocarriers. Starting from a trifunctional core molecule cont...

Collapse of high molecular weight, thermoresponsive polymer ligands on gold nanorods increases the translational and rotational diffusion coefficients due to an increase in aspect ratio thus particles become less ellipsoidal.

The incorporation of neutral hydrophilic monomer units in the hydrophobic B blocks BAB copolymers produces transient networks exhibiting a thermoresponsive behavior with maximum viscosity water.

The self-assembly of linear polymers containing chiral IL units generates a high-order supramacromolecular structure with a complex hierarchical architecture, which is able to exhibit thermoresponsive behavior (lower critical solution temperature: LCST) with different structural elements that can be used to fine tune this LCST.

The 2-(2-methoxyethoxy)ethyl methacrylate and molecular oxygen react at 50 °C under high pressure in the presence of a radical initiator to give water soluble, thermoresponsive poly(2-(2-methoxyethoxy)ethyl methacrylate) peroxide (PMEO(2)MAP), which degrades highly exothermically. The polymer structure has been confirmed by spectroscopy, elemental analysis, calorimetry and mass spectrometry.

A biologically inspired thermoresponsive polymer has been developed that mechanically induces tooth differentiation in vitro and in vivo by promoting mesenchymal cell compaction as seen in each pore of the scaffold. This normally occurs during the physiological mesenchymal condensation response that triggers tooth formation in the embryo.