Recent Advances in Stimuli‐Responsive Commodity Polymers

Abstract

Known for their adaptability to surroundings, capability of transport control of molecules, or the ability of converting one type of energy to another as a result of external or internal stimuli, responsive polymers play a significant role in advancing scientific discoveries that may lead to an array of diverge applications. This review outlines recent advances in the developments of selected commodity polymers equipped with stimuli‐responsiveness to temperature, pH, ionic strength, enzyme or glucose levels, carbon dioxide, water, redox agents, electromagnetic radiation, or electric and magnetic fields. Utilized diverse applications ranging from drug delivery to biosensing, dynamic structural components to color‐changing coatings, this review focuses on commodity acrylics, epoxies, esters, carbonates, urethanes, and siloxane‐based polymers containing responsive elements built into their architecture. In the context of stimuli‐responsive chemistries, current technological advances as well as a critical outline of future opportunities and applications are also tackled.

Facile Repair of Anti‐Corrosion Polymeric Composite Coatings Based on Light Triggered Self‐Healing

“…It is a big challenge to heat coatings directly or to use chemicals as stimuli for the purpose of triggering self-healing of polymeric coatings for restricted regions. As an energy source, light not only directly initiates selfhealing of polymer materials, [23][24][25] but indirectly triggers selfhealing through photothermal effect of photothermal fillers as well. [26][27][28] Besides, the use of fillers especially at nanoscale can improve coating properties, such as hardness, anti-corrosion capability, and barrier property.…”

Smart Hydrogels: Preparation, Characterization, and Determination of Transition Points of Crosslinked N-Isopropyl Acrylamide/Acrylamide/Carboxylic Acids Polymers

“…Three-dimensional cross-linked polymeric structures that love water are called hydrogels [1][2][3], and those that respond to external stimuli (such as pH, temperature, ionic strength, electric field, light, magnetic field, and so forth) as volume changes are called smart or intelligent or stimuli-responsive hydrogels [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15].…”

“…Temperature responsivity of smart hydrogels can be achieved with hydrophobic monomers ((such as N-isopropyl acrylamide, vinyl methylether, N-methyl acrylamide, N,N-dimethyl acrylamide, N-tert-butyl acrylamide), and pH and ionic responsivity can be achieved with ionizable organic acidic or basic monomers (such as methacrylic acid, crotonic acid, itaconic acid, mesaconic acid, aconitic acid or dimethyl amino ethyl methacrylate, diethyl amino ethyl methacrylate, vinyl pyrrolidone, vinyl imidazole) [4][5][6][7][8][9][10].…”

“…Below the LCST, the compatibility of the gel with water increases, and swelling is observed. This is explained by the strengthening of hydrogen bonds between water molecules and hydrophilic groups [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15].…”

Recent Advances in Thermoresponsive OEGylated Poly(amino acid)s

“…Stimuli-responsive polymers, so called “smart polymers” that can be triggered by a variety of external environmental stimuli such as temperature, pH, light, ionic, chemical and biological stimuli etc., and consequently with the change of physical and chemical properties, have been extensively investigated because of their potential applications in the past few decades [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 ]. Among them, thermoresponsive polymers, which exhibit a reversible phase transition to temperature, have attracted much attention due to their easy to control stimulus and potential biomedical and tissue engineering applications [ 13 , 14 , 15 ].…”