Combining compliant electrode arrays in open-mesh constructs with hydrogels yields a class of soft actuator, capable of complex, programmable changes in shape. The results include materials strategies, integration approaches, and mechanical/thermal analysis of heater meshes embedded in thermoresponsive poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (pNIPAM) hydrogels with forms ranging from 2D sheets to 3D hemisp...

Upon flowing hot steam over hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) bulk powder, efficient exfoliation and hydroxylation of BN occur simultaneously. Through effective hydrogen bonding with water and N-isopropylacrylamide, edge-hydroxylated BN nanosheets dramatically improve the dimensional change and dye release of this temperature-sensitive hydrogel and thereby enhance its efficacy in bionic, soft robo...

Colorimetric temperature sensors are prepared from photo-crosslinkable polymers by sequentially spin-coating and crosslinking alternating layers of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) and poly(para-methyl styrene). Layer thicknesses and copolymer chemistries are chosen to provide robust colorimetric temperature sensors that cover nearly the full visible spectrum.

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.

A method has been developed that enables a conductive surface to be modified so as to capture dispersed particles when the temperature is increased; poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) was grafted from electrodeposited Laponite particles using surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerisation and used to capture dispersed polystyrene particles.

Synthesis of novel zwitterionic block copolypeptides, poly(N-isopropylacrylamide)-block-poly(L-glutamic acid-co-L-lysine) [PNiPAM(n)(PLG(x)-co-PLLys(y))m , where n is the number-average degree of polymerization (DP(n)) of PNiPAM block, x and y are the mole fraction of glutamic acid and lysine residues, respectively, and m is the total DP(n) of the peptide block], and their stimuli-responsivenes...

This work describes properties of thermo-sensitive submicron sized particles having the same chemical composition but different morphologies. These particles have been prepared with an aerosol technique using dimethylformamide solutions of linear polystyrene-block-poly(N-isopropylacrylamide-block-polystyrene, PS-b-PNIPAM-b-PS. The particles were characterized by cryo-electron microscopy, microc...