The hydrophobicity of the chemical environment within a redox-responsive polymer gel synthesized by copolymerization of hydroxybutyl methacrylate (HBMA) and vinylferrocene (VF) can be controlled by tuning the oxidation state of the redox-responsive moiety, ferrocene. When ferrocene is in the uncharged reduced state, the gel is hydrophobic and selectively extracts butanol from aqueous solution. Upon oxidation to ferricenium ions, charge is induced at the ferrocene sites making the gel hydrophilic, with a reduced capacity for butanol relative to water. Equilibrium distribution coefficients and separation factors provide quantitative evidence for this changing preference for butanol depending on oxidation state. The selection of the monomer constituting the polymer backbone, HBMA, was based on an initial screening using the Hansen solubility parameters of commercially available monomers. The effect of the various constituents of the gel on the gel's butanol extraction ability has been ascertained experimentally.

Redox polymer electrodes (RPEs) have been prepared both by attachment of random copolymers of hydroxybutyl methacrylate and vinylferrocene (poly(HBMA-co-VF)) to carbon substrates by grafting either "to" or "from" the substrate surfaces, and by impregnation of porous carbon substrates with redox polymer gels of similar composition. An observed linear dependence of peak current on the square root of the applied voltage scan rate in cyclic voltammetry (CV) led to the conclusion that the rate controlling step in the redox process was the diffusive transfer of electrons through the redox polymer layer. The variation in the peak current with increasing concentration of the redox species in the polymer indicated that the electron transport transitioned from bounded diffusion to electron hopping. A modified form of the Blauch-Saveant equation for apparent diffusivity of electrons through a polymer film indicated that bounded diffusion was the dominant mechanism of electron transport in RPEs with un-cross-linked polymer chains at low concentrations of the redox species, but, as the concentration of the redox species increased, electron hopping became more dominant, and was the primary mode of electron diffusion above a certain concentration level of redox species. In the cross-linked polymer gels, bounded diffusion was limited because of the restricted mobility of the polymer chains. Electron hopping was the primary mode of electron diffusion in such systems at all concentrations of the redox species.