Design principle of multi-responsive smart copolymers

Design of multi-responsive smart, soft materials is at the onset of many developments in polymer physics, chemical physics, biophysics and biochemistry research. A system is known as smart responsive when a slight change in external stimuli can drastically alter its structure, function and stability. Furthermore, when the relevant energy scale is of the order of thermal energy, materials are classified as soft matter and are driven by large conformational/compositional fluctuations. At the same time it is very difficult to address these problems in both experimental and theoretical setups. In this work, combining molecular simulation and experiments, we propose design principles of a wide range of smart copolymer architectures in aqueous and mixed solvent environments. This provides an almost predictable conformational behavior and thus presents a highly tunable smart polymer design principle.

This work has been performed within a fruitful collaboration with several experimental colleagues, especially Mark Watson (Uni Kentucky), Manfred Wagner (MPIP Mainz) and Marc Schmutz (ICS Strasbourg).