Issue 7, 2015

Towards being genuinely smart: ‘isothermally-responsive’ polymers as versatile, programmable scaffolds for biologically-adaptable materials

Abstract

Responsive polymers have found diverse application across polymer, biomaterials, medical, sensing and engineering fields. Despite many years of study, this has focussed mainly on those polymers which undergo thermally-induced changes – either a lower or upper critical solution temperature. To rival the adaptability of Nature's macromolecules, polymers must respond in a ‘smarter’ way to other triggers such as enzymes, biochemical gradients, ion concentration or metabolites, to name a few. Here we review the concept of ‘isothermal’ responses where core thermoresponsive polymers are chemically engineered such that they undergo their useful response (such as coil-globule transition, cell uptake or cargo release) but at constant temperature. This is achieved by consideration of their phase diagram where solubility can be changed by small structural changes to the end-group, side-chain/substituents or through main chain modification/binding. The current state-of-the-art is summarised here.

Graphical abstract: Towards being genuinely smart: ‘isothermally-responsive’ polymers as versatile, programmable scaffolds for biologically-adaptable materials

Article information

Article type
Review Article
Submitted
11 Nov 2014
Accepted
05 Dec 2014
First published
05 Dec 2014
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Polym. Chem., 2015,6, 1033-1043

Author version available

Towards being genuinely smart: ‘isothermally-responsive’ polymers as versatile, programmable scaffolds for biologically-adaptable materials

D. J. Phillips and M. I. Gibson, Polym. Chem., 2015, 6, 1033 DOI: 10.1039/C4PY01539H

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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