Design Synthesis and Application of Stimuli Responsive Polymeric Materials

Abstract

Functional stimuli-responsive polymers undergo physical/chemical/conformational changes in newlineresponse to changes in the environmental temperature, pH, ionic strength, etc. These polymers newlinehave been touted as the next big thing for applications in wide areas of engineering and biomedical newlinesciences. Polymers bearing multi-stimuli responsive functionalities are preferred over the single- newlinestimuli responsive polymers as they provide finer control over the functionalities. However, newlineapplications of the multi-stimuli responsive polyemers are yet to reach their full potential. This is newlineprobably due to the following reasons: (1) facile synthesis of stimuli responsive polymers is still newlinenot achieved and (2) precission control of the functionalities of these polymers has not yet been newlineexplored. Despite their versatility, these RDRP processes suffer from undesired color, odor, newlinetoxicity due to the sulfur chain ends (for RAFT) and due to catalyst/catalyst precursor leaching newline(for ATRP and SET-LRP) Catalyst residue in the final polymer restricts biomedical applications newlineof the polymers synthesized by these RDRP processes. On the hand, the growing demands of the newlinepolymer market have led to the development of efficient and green polymerization processes to newlinecomply with the environmental regulations and occupational health/safety requirements. There is newlinea need to develop polymerization techniques to produce well-defined polymers and exclude the newlineuse of any hazardous organic solvents and stringent reaction conditions. Our research aims to newlinedevelop new polymeric materials of various monomers and it s potential application like self- newlinehealing, drug release and heavy metal removal. This research also aims to study the detailed newlinesolution properties and stimuli-response of the synthesized polymeric materials and explore their newlinepotential applications towards construction of materials with antifouling property, tunable surface newlinehydrophobicity and contaminant removal capability. newline